The State of My Shorts

It was Sunday and it had been one of those lost weekends. You know the kind. The kind where you are either going to kill yourself or kill the first Vietnamese person who crosses your path. I’m sure everyone has weekends like these: where you have been cast in a David Lynch film, possibly Blue Velvet, and you are doing everything in your power to punish yourself and others to the best of your ability, all set against some surrealist backdrop of Vietnamese weirdness.

There had been recent events, far too tedious to recount here, events beyond my control and certainly out of the blue, as in, whoa, I really didn’t see that coming at all, that had caused enough angst, confusion and aggression for me to feel this way. It should also be noted that I had been drinking. For those who know me, this may not be surprising. But what was surprising, was that I hadn’t been drinking much, perhaps three glasses of wine over dinner, Sunday being my alcohol-free day ‘n’ all.

It was 9:30pm, a night of the not-so-distant past, a single night that has now become all nights. I had decided to walk home from the Japanese restaurant where I was having dinner, a walk of about 45 minutes, I guess, at a pinch. For those in the know – and I definitely count myself as one of those not in the know – a foreigner walking alone at night in Saigon, particularly down streets darkened by the absence of cafes and restaurants, devoid of people, is, to some Vietnamese, a flashing neon sign lit up in bright red carnival-like lettering that says, “I am a very stupid and ridiculous foreigner, who, being so obviously rich, will have many things of value about my person, the taking of which will be quite easy, considering how ridiculously dumb that I am.”

So far, along my walk – as is normal for this part of the world – I had been shouted at by more than my fair share of motorcycle taxi drivers, on average, about one every twenty metres. And, I mean shouting. It doesn’t matter if these motorcycle taxi drivers are right across the other side of an intersection or mere inches from you, this almighty racket will begin to sound, “Motorbike??!! Motorbike??!! Woo!! Woo!! You!! You!!” Often followed by my personal favourite: the loud handclapping. This routine can get old very quickly. It’s like being stuck in a looped documentary show, surrounded by some kind of chimpanzee-like creatures – I think it’s the handclapping and the woos woos that make me think of chimpanzees – that regularly go into a frenzy every time they see you coming. Walking around my neighbourhood can be a little stressful. But, of course, this is what makes it so special. Bless ‘em.

So, my walk home went something like this:

Step…step…

“Motorbike?!!”

“No thank you.”

Step…step…step…

“Motorbike?!!”

“No thank you”

Step…step…

“Motorbike?!!”

“No thank you.”

Step…step…step…

“Motorbike?!!”

“Go fuck yourself”

Step…

“Motorbike?!!”

“No thank you”

Step…step…

“Motorbike?!!”

You get the idea. As a foreigner in Vietnam, patience lasts the first few months of being here. Then it’s gone, and it may never ever return.

Eventually, not far from my apartment, I was suddenly in one of those situations, where a decent soundtrack wouldn’t have gone astray. There’s a lot to be said for a good soundtrack. I mean, if I had have heard the sound of a cello or maybe some high pitched quivering violins, maybe the music from Jaws, even a timpani for God’s sake, I would have sensed the danger I was in, for, unbeknownst to me, I was being tailed by two men who had formulated a plot so clever, so sinister in its details that it makes me shiver at the prospect of writing it here now. But this is a tale that needs to be told, no matter how horrifying its aspect, so that those who come after, may be forewarned.

It should be noted that I have seen two street fights in Saigon, involving both men and women, in one case, an old woman of about fifty. In both situations, the goal seemed to be, if not to kill the other person, to at least maim them for life. Vietnam has had a tough history, and, therefore has bred some tough individuals. I left both of these violent spectacles with a strong resolution never to get involved in street violence with the Vietnamese; they don’t stop and they don’t appear to factor in inconveniences such as killing or being killed; you could say they get caught up in the moment. The Vietnamese are nothing, if not passionate about pride, about fighting and about making sure that no one gets the better of them. And how they do this and still manage to be cute, is anyone’s guess.

So, here I was, walking along, when a Vietnamese guy posing as a gay hooker blocks my path, offering sex and trying to get his hands on my goods, that is, my penis and, simultaneously, my wallet, which I keep right next to my penis. Whether he was, in fact, a gay hooker or not, I really don’t know; there was no sign of fishnets or hotpants, though there was that look in his eyes that said, “Right now, I am so whacked off my head that I am like a buzzy bee, a buzzy, buzzy, buzzy bee, and what I really need, more than anything, is more drugs or money for more drugs”. For me, this just topped off, what was already, a really lousy weekend. It was kinda the last straw, so, pretty much without breaking stride – I know better than to antagonize in situations like this - I laughed in his face, grabbed him by his forearms, and threw him against the wall (understand that this wasn’t a big guy here). I immediately turned to walk away from him, just in time to see his accomplice pull up at the kerb on his motorbike, on standby, to see if he was needed. I kept walking into the darkened street. Later, it occurred to me that I should have turned and walked back the way I had come, back towards a busier street.

After a short time, aside from the sound of my beating heart, which was now in my head, I heard another unidentified sound. Thinking it may have been my gay hooker mugger, I turned around to see that, somewhere in the two second window of opportunity when I had turned my back on him, he had unzipped my backpack which was on my back (when it comes to stealing stuff, the Vietnamese are pretty fast). I stopped and looked inside to see if anything was missing but I wasn’t too worried. I never put anything valuable in my backpack. Not in this town. Looking in my bag, I saw that he had taken the first thing his hand had come across. Now, I don’t know what kind of payoff he was hoping for, as he and his accomplice crouched over my stolen goods in some dark, cockroach-infested alleyway, but what they got, was a plastic bag, inside of which, was my swimming shorts – still wet from my afternoon swim – and a small wet towel.

I had just zipped up my backpack and was continuing on my way home, a little miffed that I was going to have to buy new swimming shorts, when a plastic bag came sailing through the air and landed right at my feet. Picking it up, I looked inside to see my wet bathers and my wet towel, delivered back to me, thrown from the back of a passing motorcycle. I mean, in some countries, a pair of rather sporty looking bathing shorts wouldn’t be a bad payoff. But here, no. Here, they got to be fussy. Immediately, the potential seriousness of the whole situation melted away and I just laughed. I suspect that this action, returning my stolen bathers, was meant more as the ultimate fuck you, than as a gesture of goodwill and peace to all men. For a Vietnamese thief, returning something stolen, no matter how limited its value, is unheard of, so, I guess, this says a lot about the state of my shorts. Perhaps, immediately, upon inspection, they had noticed how the elastic in the waist has gone which does kinda make them slip down a lot when I’m trying to do my laps.

Glenn Wyatt

My blog: http://glennn2000.wordpress.com/