Bangkok Hard Time (15 page)

Now, my friend Sandy who ran that travel agency on Soi 19 was never involved in heroin trafficking, so I was confused. When I delved further into the subject of exactly what business he was referring to, I learned what the charges against them were.

The Californian claimed that Sandy was a member of the travel incentive group of which he was the president. The insinuation that my old friend was somehow involved in his nasty operation was evident. But knowing Sandy, I knew that this veiled allegation could not possibly be true and was only a ruse to get me to accept this man as a friend of a friend. That was not going to happen.

The factory guard, Vinai, pretended not to notice when I slapped them both. That was the only time that I ever initiated unprovoked violence against a fellow prisoner. I instantly regretted it because I had always despised bullies but then the remembered words from the first sergeant’s orientation speech over twenty years earlier came to mind, “You will never touch a Thai child.” Recalling that admonition, I felt slightly vindicated in my slapping the two pedophiles. It felt as if I was simply an instrument of their karma.

From then on, the two were relegated to the bottom rung of the prison society, even below the conmen, sneak thieves or wife-beaters. They were never allowed to set foot in The Garden.

The Visits

Over the years, a number of people went to the trouble to come visit for various reasons. My old friend Joy had cut her association with the Group since my arrest. The Thai police never showed up at her barbershop on Soi 19 to inquire about involvement in any illegal activities. Realizing that I had not given anyone up, she soon became a frequent visitor. Sometimes she came alone, sometimes with one of her boyfriends or girlfriends, but she always brought money and special food.

A few hippie travelers had long ago come to the prison and collected names of foreign prisoners. They printed posters with visit information and names of
farang
inmates listed by nationality. The posters were placed on bulletin boards in hostels and guest houses all over Bangkok and updated from time to time. Over the years, backpackers, trekkers and other low-budget travelers would respond to the posters and come to visit for an inexpensive lark, or maybe just out of morbid curiosity. Many of the indigent foreign prisoners who went out to these visits entertained the visitors with exaggeratedly sad prison stories that sounded like some kind of maudlin bullshit straight out of
Midnight Express
and tried to play them for a donation of some chump change. It was always a pathetic scene.

Local church and missionary groups would also come to visit the foreign prisoners from time to time. They would send in a list of names which had been obtained from the various embassies. The first and only instance that I went to the visit area for one of these, I met a group of Bible-toting students from ISB. They were mortified when I told them that I had graduated from their high school about the same time they were born. After answering their questions about living in Bangkok during the Vietnam War, I was subjected to the appropriate amount of self-righteous Christian indignation at what they had seen and heard. Then they asked me if I had ever heard of Jesus. I bit my tongue and asked them about my favorite teacher, Mrs Saluga. They told me that she had become ill and died not long ago. I managed not to cry – at that moment anyway – though I certainly felt the urge to do so.

A few years into my stay, various members of my immediate family came to visit at different times. My mother found another Thai Army general to escort her to the prison and arrange for them to meet with me on the bench outside the vice warden’s office.

A few months later, my sister Carol, along with her two kids, arranged to meet with me in that same area. Being able to hold and kiss my kinfolk was like being in heaven. I appreciated the sentiment of the visits, but always felt worse after a visit than I did before. Whenever they left, I found myself alone and feeling sorry for myself again. Before long, I would be whining to myself again, alone in purgatory.

My father visited me once with his second wife, Rose, in tow. She had never had much use for me, and our mutual disdain affected my relationship with the old man. The whole thing now was compounded by the fact that they both obviously resented the fact that I surely had lost face for him among his Thai friends and former Thai military counterparts.

Dad told me that he had gone to visit the highest ranking Thai Army general whom he knew to ask for his help. When he told the general that his son was in a Thai prison for heroin smuggling, the general had told him that he was glad and hoped that the Thai prison system would help me with my problem. At the time, I was taken aback by his response. Today, I accept that. My father had tried to raise me right. He would eventually disinherit me.

Colonel Joe Nagel was a family friend. He and his gracious wife Charlotte had lived two doors away from us at the Presidio of Monterey and had lived in Bangkok when our family first came to Thailand. Now, twenty years later, Brigadier General Joe was the commanding officer of the Joint US Military Assistance Group in Thailand. He came to visit Jasper, that former army sergeant from Atlanta now serving out the rest of his sentence as a blueshirt in the prison.

The visits took place inside the vice warden’s office. On those occasions, General Nagel would request to see me as well. On my initial visit there, I first deferred to the vice warden by bowing to him and squatting in front of his desk before addressing General Joe. This earned valuable brownie points from the warden, because it showed him that I understood who had the power – at least at that juncture.

The most memorable frequent visitor was Father Joe Maier. As a Catholic Redemptorist priest, he was primarily involved with his mission to uplift, feed and educate the poor Thai children in the Bangkok slum of Klong Toey, where he had already lived amongst them for almost twenty years. He disliked the obvious comparison that had tagged him as the “Mother Teresa of Bangkok”. Why he ever took time the time to visit our prison is known only to him.

A blueshirt trustee would come into the prison yard saying that the Father was coming inside to the Central Control Building on his unannounced, perhaps-once-a-month Saturday visits. Those who wanted to see him could go. I was always too shamed to ever tell him of my own association with the Soi Sap whorehouses in Klong Toey the many years before as an ISB high school kid. Nonetheless, I always took the opportunity to be in his presence.

The double steel doors of the prison’s third inside wall would open as he approached and Father Joe would step through. It was always a remarkable sight to behold as this tall, powerfully built man dressed in robes and wearing ragged running shoes would walk all the way into the heart of the prison where no other foreign visitor was ever allowed.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand says that The King of Thailand is The Defender of All Faiths. Father Joe obviously knew this and entered unimpeded and seemingly at will. He was an earthy man who was known to take a nip of Jim Beam whiskey from time to time for … ahem, preventative medicinal purposes in case of a possible snakebite later.

No prisoners dared to take communion from him if they were stoned. Further, Father Joe could and would cuss like any other prison convict Thai or foreigner if that is what it took to communicate his message in whatever language. When he reached into the pocket of his tattered robe to retrieve his container of communion wafers and handed one to you, a sinner tended to believe that it indeed represented the Body of Christ. In fact, if he had any hair on his head, Father Joe would have looked like my conception of Jesus.

Petition In Limbo

After two years of imprisonment, I had composed a letter of petition for a Royal Pardon from His Majesty The King. As these petitions typically took another couple of years to get an answer, it was important to be seen by the powers that be as a prisoner of continuing good behavior. The petition was initially filed with the building chief, then forwarded up the chain of command through the Thai Corrections Department. Recommendations and comments were added along the way. Sometimes a drug test was given before it made its way to the Ministry of the Interior, who checked the veracity of your petition’s claims and inquired about the approval of your embassy and/or various law enforcement arms. The findings were submitted with the petition to the Royal Privy Council for its consideration, at which point it could be rejected or sent to His Majesty for His Blessing.

I have no copy of the petition letter I wrote, but I surely remember it well enough to recapitulate what was in it. It said that I was taking the opportunity of the auspicious occasion of His Majesty’s 60
^th
Birthday to pray for His continued long life. I briefly explained my history in Thailand, telling of my deep abiding love for Thailand and the Thai people.

Of course, it was mentioned that the Thai prison system had helped me by freeing me from heroin addiction, and that I now fully accepted the consequence of my own karma. Then, thanking the Thai people for allowing me the right to appeal to their King for the purpose of asking for clemency, I admitted my culpability and begged His forgiveness for offending Him by breaking the law of the Thai people. Finally, Pee Lek’s explanation of “only your mind, heart and The King can make you free” was now completely understood and conveyed to His Majesty. Now all I could do was wait.

The long days would pass into weeks, which, of course, would slowly become months. The departing commercial flights from Don Muang International Airport, only a few miles away, continued to roar overhead, bringing the constant reminder that you were still on the ground and going nowhere.

Both of my cell mates had already submitted their petitions and were becoming more tightly wound as the months, turning into years, dragged by. Finally, the answer came for Jean-Yves but not the answer he wanted and days later Didier’s petition was also rejected. Both seemed on the verge of snapping after almost six years of waiting. It was very quiet in cell #165 for days to follow.

“You can do the time or let the time do you”, is the classic wise prisoner’s proverb. Actually, I consider the term “wise prisoner” to be an oxymoron. If one was wise, then one would not be a prisoner to begin with, I’m just saying …

Didier had previously been quite docile and particularly amicable with other prisoners. Jean-Yves had always been on edge, but had the forbearance to control his constant irritation with those around him. I had always admired these qualities in them. It was obvious now that they were not quite doing the time; the time was starting to do them.

A few days later, I was sitting in the American hut waiting for the Kid to boil water for morning coffee, when from just outside the structure came the sound of fighting. I walked to the door to see what was happening.

At the foot of the short bridge leading into the house was a young German prisoner being beaten over a drug debt by the five Chinese guys that lived in the adjacent hut. Not being able to stand by and watch this transpire right at my doorway, I reached above the entrance and retrieved the weighted bamboo club that Bob had kept there for just such occasions. I screamed at them to stop and surprisingly everyone stopped. The German boy took the opportunity to run across the bridge, past me and into the hut. The Hong Kong prisoners who had been assaulting him made no attempt to follow.

Whether their stopping was out of respect for me or respect for the long standing unwritten rule that no one was to enter the American hut without first being invited, I am not sure. Then again, the hulking presence of Bubba Hollywood standing behind me may have had something to do with it.

The guard assigned for duty that day in The Garden pretended not to notice the altercation. When Bubba left the hut to go to the prison store, the German kid followed him as far as the German shack. The German retreat was next door to the French hut, and when Didier saw the kid whining to his compatriots about what had happened to him at the hands of the Chinese, it set him off. He began ranting about how he was pissed off at the Chinamen for always ganging up on the Westerners whenever they had a beef with one of them. It was always two, three or more on one, and the incidents were becoming more frequent, he alleged. Jean-Yves just sat there and rolled his eyes as he always did whenever Didier went off on a tirade.

Didier was fairly fluent in about five languages. He spoke English very well with almost no accent – except when he was angry, and then he would spew out invective with a ridiculously fake-sounding French accent. It was always funny as hell. Jean-Yves and I would laugh at him and that would inflame him even more.

In the middle of his diatribe about the Westerners needing to give a corrective lesson to the Chinese, Didier saw an unfortunate Singaporean at the shower water trough there towards the rear of the island. A strange man with an Elvis Presley fixation, the Chinese Singaporean had an Elvis hairdo and spent hours playing Presley tunes on a harmonica. I actually liked his musical offerings because he was very accomplished.

His tiny hut was close to the American house. The only complaint anyone had with him was that he spent an exorbitant amount of time combing his hair and soaping his crotch at the shower trough. That is why the Westerners called him Penis Presley. Though offensive to most and an object of derision to almost all, he was generally tolerated because he was harmless.

On this day, however, poor Penis Presley had chosen the precisely wrong time to engage in his self-indulgent ablution. Didier interrupted his blustering, ran to the water trough and slapped the pathetic man so hard that it knocked him out. That evening after lockup, Didier would just not shut up about the Chinese problem. I refused to participate in the conversation and pretended to read a book.

Jean-Yves, though, was always willing to debate with Didier about almost anything. It was like a favorite evening lockup pastime for them. Didier would say something like “The sea is blue” and Jean-Yves would say, “No, the sea is green”, and off they would go into to the depths of the minutiae of facts supporting their particular position on the subject. I think it’s just a French thing.

Fortunately, they argued in their own language, so I was able to tune them out as if it was white noise. During the almost four years that I shared a cell with them, I made no real effort to learn their language, but could not help but pick up a little, almost by osmosis. I was having a hard enough time improving my command of the Thai language, and, after all, I was in a Thai prison and had no use for actively learning to speak French.

The debate that evening was more serious, however. I understood what was being discussed well enough to know that Didier was trying to get Jean-Yves to join him in beating down the worst of the Chinese troublemakers. Though he was no coward, Jean-Yves would have no part of it, but conceded that “If they come to beat you, then I will help you, of course.”

Then Didier turned to me with the same question. My answer was similar. “If I would help that stupid German boy, then of course, I would help you.” I said this with a modicum of false bravado. Never a prison tough guy, I was no punk either. I added the caveat that I would not participate in initiating any violence. I, in fact, took that opportunity to censure him for beating Penis Presley, and Jean-Yves agreed. Unmentioned to them, but in the back of my mind, was the fact that the reply to my petition for pardon was surely coming any month now. I did not want to do anything to jeopardize that outcome.

Years earlier, when I had first arrived at Building #2, there were only thirty-five
farang
prisoners in The Garden. Over the years, many Westerners had been pardoned and none of the Chinese. The resulting math: there were more than 160 foreigners and the majority of them were Chinese.

I had personally never had a serious problem with any of the Chinese guys and often was the happy recipient of their invitations to dine with them. Though I felt sorry for them not receiving equal treatment, I never openly questioned why it was like this since it was really none of my business as to why.. In fact, the Thai prison system treated them better than they treated their own people. The main difference was that the Thai prisoners generally accepted the inequities, while the Chinese prisoners resented it. Perhaps understandably, it made them more irritable and harder still to get along with and for that I could not blame them.