Pepsi, My Lucky Pen and the Breakfast Buffet

In the morning I went down to the small outdoor restaurant, for the breakfast buffet. The dogs were everywhere. Everywhere. And always looking up at you with those crying eyes, wanting something, crusts of the toast. Or, was it the bacon they were after?
I hate buffets at the best of times. No, not hate, it’s more that I find them soul destroying. I think it’s because of the way they expose the nature of humans, and because, when I’m in a restaurant, I want to be served at the table (dammit). If I wanted to be a waiter, I wouldn’t have gone to university. Of all the buffets, the breakfast buffet is the worst. There’s always some dumbass guy wandering around, still half asleep, caught between the broiled sausages and the flapjacks, unable to decide, getting in my way, getting in my way no matter which way I turn. And, even in that half asleep state, even while he can barely see out of his dumbass eyes, some awful primeval instinct in him is still trying to get between me and the ham, between me and the French toast, some competitive edge in him, wanting to keep it all for himself, that by letting me get to the sausages, he loses something. I mean, come on, man, it’s a buffet for Christ’s sake. There’s more than enough for all of the people here and all the dogs. (the dogs do well from the buffet actually, they are the real winners, which explains why there are so many of them, like the floor is growing them or something. Before long, people are throwing little titbits from their plates – though not the guy that kept getting in my way – from their plates, onto the floor for the dogs. Never anything good mind, generally bits of toast or a roll. What makes them think that these dogs want crust over broiled sausages or crispy fried bacon? It just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it’s a buffet for Christ’s sake.)

You can learn a lot about people from watching buffet activity. Buffet people are caught between, ‘this is my food, all of it, now get the fuck away from it,’ and the more civilised, ‘oh, there’s enough here for everyone, I like to share all this food with strangers, with my fellow man, sure you can get in front of me, sure take the last profiterole, it’s yours’. So, what happens is, caught between the basic greedy tendencies of man and the apparent plentitude before them, there is a certain edginess to the about-to-be-diners, a foot in both camps.

I hadn’t planned on staying another night. The weather had turned and the sea was a lifeless watery blue-grey, like a sock. But, I just didn’t quite get out of my chair. It can happen like that. Sometimes you just have to stay put until it all blows over. You know what I mean?

Anyway, while I was sitting in the restaurant, lost in my coffee and my world, a woman came up to me and complimented me on the pen I was using to write into my small notebook. It’s a silver pen, polished up to look like a motherfucker, chrome and smooth like a 1967 Camero.
“Thank you,” I say. “It’s my lucky pen. It was my father’s pen,” sounding for all the world like I was born with a silver pen in my hand. “It was bequeathed to me five years ago this Saturday. My father had this pen from the time he was a boy until the day he died , and, everyday, he carried this pen in his top left breast pocket, only, he never used it; it was his lucky pen.”
Truth is, I have no idea where the pen came from . It’s a cheap pen, that’s for sure. The woman was Swedish or something. Not that that explains everything, or anything. But, it certainly made me wonder what was on her mind. Not that I distrusted her. Actually, Scandinavians are about the only people that I do trust. The restaurant was full of them, Scandinavians that is, families of them, all speaking in strange tongues, with kids who looked like little Bjorks and eyed the dogs like they wanted to jump on their backs and ride them like reindeer out into the fjords. Beastly.

Anyway, one thing lead to another, and I was reminded of an episode that occurred two days earlier. I was in Bangkok, walking across an overpass, when I spotted two Thai girls standing on the overpass holding clipboards. In Thailand, clipboards always spell trouble. It’s really something you want to stay away from. As I walked past, one of the girls turned to me, to give me her spiel. It took me a few moments, to realize that her spiel consisted of the words ‘hi Glenn’ said over and over. I stopped, and I’m looking into this Thai girl’s face without an ounce of recognition, but, she certainly knows me.
“I’m Pepsi,” she keeps saying, “You don’t remember me, but I’m Pepsi. Pepsi.”
I’m quite certain that I’ve never known anyone called Pepsi, I mean, how could you? It’s not a name that’s simply going to go away and make room for a real relationship.
But, here is a young good looking Thai girl, so I start giving her my spiel. I start telling her how I definitely know her, but, you know, things are a little hazy. So, I’m asking her where we met. What else could I do? There was no walking away from this mystery on a Thai overpass. And, anyway, where the hell was I going to go?
“How long ago did we meet?” I ask.
“Two years ago,” she says.
Pepsi…Pepsi. I’m saying this name in my head and getting nought in return. But her face, which, by now, is right in mine – and, if I’m not mistaken, is really putting on the moves – is beginning to look familiar. She remembers everything about me, every detail of who I am , where I’ve lived, what I do. Surreal.

Then, the penny dropped. Actually, not so penny dropping, as fog slowly lifting: here standing in front of me, was the first Thai girlfriend I ever had (I use the term girlfriend indulgently) and I didn’t remember her; it wasn’t two years ago, it was more like six. At the time, she was only about twenty-years-old and still in university (I remember the uniform), and I had only just moved to Thailand, I was green, to say the least (she was brown, still is).

Every synapse of my being was telling me that it’s only right that we sleep together, one more time, for old time’s sake, to find out what time she was going to lose the clipboard, and to make all arrangements that would lead to underwear and to my hotel room. I could hear the voices in my head, some manic, crazy guy screaming, “So, what time do you get off work? Let’s get a drink. We could talk about the old days. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you. Whaddya say huh?”
But, this isn’t what I said. What I said, was, lovely to see you again, and I must be on my way, hyperventilating and saying the word ‘damn’ repeatedly for about the next hour. There are just some girls whom, even a dead grandmother wouldn’t get in the way of, or perhaps, especially a dead grandmother.

It wasn’t until later, that I remembered her name. Pep. It was Pep. For some reason, I didn’t put the two together. I suspect the ‘si’ in Pepsi may have been a later invention. Who knows? I know for sure, that I have aged at least ten years in the last six, so, she did well to spot me in that fleeting instant in a city of millions on a busy overpass. Have I been a bull in a China shop? Or, in this case, a bull in a Thailand shop? I try to be a careful bull, but, perhaps, I’m a bull, nonetheless. It’s not always easy, to know the mind of a girl, particularly an Asian girl.