~Two~
~An Unremarkable Night With A Remarkable Revelation~
Wilawan was a place unlike any other. It was small, hap-hazard and bright as a peacock’s plumage. None of the chairs matched, none of the table cloths were free of brown stains, none of the walls unadorned by yellow streaks of age and (likely) nicotine. You might be wondering why I decided to go there. Wilawan was a haven of raw honesty: what you see is what you get. It was refreshing. It seemed so out of place in a world obsessed with fake tan, trimmed bushes and plucked eyebrows.
I pushed the door open. The scent of fresh capsicum tickling my nose like a long lost friend. The restaurant was quiet tonight: three tables, two couples and a family of four. One of the couples were staring at each other over the candle centre piece, discussing nothing and everything. The other couple sat in the comfortable silence that comes with complete understanding of another person. The family of four: three generations, granddad, his two children and his grandchild. The grandchild pressing for more stories from granddad’s inexhaustible library of adventure stories. Currently granddad was regaling them with a tale of his time in ‘nam. Wilawan and its myriad of inhabitants never failed to bring a smile to my face.
“So where is he?” Will asked. He appeared from behind a screen and embraced me.
Things about Will: he is Thai/Scottish. Named after William Wallace who was later immortalised by Mel Gibson’s turn in Braveheart. He is about 5’ 8” and fresh faced. He is probably my best friend in all the world.
“Just me tonight,” I said. Will’s expression surprised me: shock.
“You’re kidding right?”
“No. Just me. Table for one.”
“Did he stand you up?”
“Nah, just not in the mood.”
“Fair play.” Will looked unconvinced by my answer.
Will showed me to my table, close enough to the bar (I’m not sure that it could legitimately be called a bar, but whatever) so that he could still speak to me while he poured drinks or polished cutlery.
“My mum has missed you,” he laughed. “She was beginning to wonder whether some handsome stranger had whisked you off your feet.”
“That’s unlikely.”
“That’s what I said, but she doesn’t listen. She thinks that you settling down would mean that there is hope for me.”
“Equally unlikely.”
“Yep. Wine or beer?”
“Wine, please.”
I had been visiting Wilawan for years. In all of those years I had only tried about 6 different things on a menu with 40 different options. I was in every sense of the word: predictable.
I leafed through the menu as though I were reading it with new eyes.
“Where will we go on honeymoon?” like a confused radio I picked up conversation from around the room. It was the guy who still – from what I could tell – hadn’t taken his eyes off his girlfriend.
“You haven’t even proposed yet. How do you know that I’ll even say yes?”
Classic hard to get. The conversation brought a smile to my face. I relaxed back into my chair. Note: I know it is considered rude to eavesdrop on conversations but I’m not really one for obeying social norms.
“You are going to say yes?” I could feel the beads of sweat forming on his brow. She is enjoying this, I could tell. She was a cat playing with a mouse. Of course she was going to say yes, in the back of his mind he knew it too.
“You’ve not touched your wine,” Will observed. It was true – I hadn’t. “Is everything okay? First you come for dinner alone and now you don’t touch your wine!”
Will was looking at me from across the bar. His expression was puzzled. I shrugged my shoulders in response. I wasn’t ready to go into THAT yet.
“Ah! Mitch, my darling!” Walida was a big lady. Big of waist. Big of bust. Big of arse. But most importantly, big of heart. She was as wide as she was tall, with her hair tied back in a neat bun. The faint aroma of freshly smoked hashish clung to her like a heavy perfume.
“We have missed you! How long has it been?”
“Six days, I think,” I responded. Told you I was a regular.
She waved a sausage finger at me, “That is six days too long! And Will tells me you are here on your own tonight? I had hoped that you had met the prince of your dreams – or a brigand – tall and dark. Yes, much more likely a brigand!”
She placed a plate in front of me. I hadn’t even ordered anything yet. Walida would often bring new dishes out of the kitchen for me to try. “Crispy duck,” she explained. “Go on, try it, try. Will get him some cutlery.”
Walida settled down into the seat opposite me. She watched as a skewered some of the shredded duck with my fork. The smell was intense, more fresh chilli but with notes of galangal and lime. My mouth was watering. I nearly got the chance to taste it before being interrupted.
“Try the dip,” Walida demanded. “That is why it’s there!”
I conceded, covering the food in the thick brown soy based dipping sauce. Barely had the food even touched my tongue than she began to question me.
“What do you think?” She leaned across the table desperate for my approval. It was wonderful in truth. Like a firework of flavour exploding on my palette. I nodded, reaching for the wine to douse the flames.
“Beautiful!” It was the only word that described the taste. I had, in all honesty, never tasted something so good before.
“Have some more,” she encouraged me. Walida sat and watched me as I demolished the plate of shredded duck. It made her happy to see someone enjoying the fruits of her labour so much.
When the plate was empty and the wine glass refilled – under Walida’s strict instructions – she began her interrogation.
“Something is different with you,” it was an opening statement, not a question. I tried to deny her, but Walida was nothing if not persuasive. “Come on,” she said, “Tell me what is going on.”
I remember studying the brown stains on the table cloth for a long time. I wondered if they would make some sort of picture if I connected them. Then I played with the stem of my wine glass.
She sat silently. Waiting for me to speak.
“Do you ever wonder why we are here?” I asked, finally.
“No,” was her simple, one-word answer. “We are here to make people happy. We are here to bring children into this world and keep it going.”
I caught Will’s eye. His face a mask.
“But that can’t be it. Can it?”
She smiled at me, as though she was the oracle at Delphi, keeper of all the World’s great secrets.
“You young ones,” she shook her head – still smiling. “Desperate for answers, not willing to go out there and find them for yourselves! People these days expect the answers to be handed them on a plate! Lazy sods! What can I get you to eat?”
An hour had gone past and still I hadn’t ordered. “I’ll have Panang, please. Extra spicy.”
“I don’t know why I even bothered to ask.”
Walida had had a difficult life, though at the time I didn’t know the half of it. She was born in poverty and pollution in a run down flat in a less than savoury suburb of Bangkok. She had never been jealous of those that had more than her, she was contented with her lot. She had a wagon that she pushed around day and night serving street food. Soon afterwards through hard graft and determination – nothing more – she had become successful enough to open her own small restaurant.
Her establishment became a ‘go to’, almost a landmark for foreign businessmen as the Asian markets expanded in the 1980s. One of her regular customers was a burly, red-haired Scot called Alexander. Walida and Alexander fell in love and at some point in the following years, Walida fell pregnant with his child.
She then moved to Scotland, determined to start a life for herself, husband and child there. Bliss seems to be a fleeting moment in life. Alexander was killed during a light aircraft display. The pilot seemingly lost control and the plane ploughed through the crowd as though it were a sickle reaping wheat. This was when Walida started to become reliant on the drugs. That numbing feeling that makes pain seem somewhat less significant.
The rest, as they say, is history. Walida found herself in the United States and opening this little restaurant. And so her life had remained in stasis until this very moment. Her expanding waistline and her son’s receding hairline being the only things to determine the passage of time.
I don’t think it would be fair of me to say that Walida was stuck. She seemed happy. Content to produce the most amazing meals in this dismal city. She herself had said that each of us was here to make others happy. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Walida believed that or it was just a lie she told herself to keep her ticking along.
Walida disappeared into the back of the shop. Peace was restored, for a moment at least. I hadn’t even noticed that the loving couple and the veteran’s family had left while I had been engaged in conversation. The only patrons left were myself and the silent couple. Still silent. They may as well have been statues – contented statues though.
The welcoming hiss of opening a bottle of beer brought me back to the moment. Will was leaning on the bar sipping a Singha.
“That was a little deep,” he said.
“Maybe,” I agreed.
“Do you think she meant it?” he asked, taking another swig from the bottle.
“Meant what?”
“What she said about having kids?”
“Probably not.” I wasn’t the best at trying to comfort people.
We descended into an uncomfortable, contemplative silence.
Some more things that you should know about Will:
That night would be a turning point in both of our lives. I would start a journey to try and find myself. Will would start a journey to try and find that elusive man, the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.
Will, as per his own admission at my wedding, never found what he described as ‘The One’. But he did find a man that would make him reasonably happy. The sex wasn’t electric, but this man – Oliver – did love him.
Will and Oliver would end up with a beautiful family. Two little girls, one named Iris and the other named Fern. They would move to Maine and own a beautiful house on the Atlantic coast. Oliver would own a boat, Will would open his own version of Wilawan and both would be CONTENT.
They would get married on Oliver’s boat shortly after gay marriage was legalised in Maine, in February 2013 – Valentine’s day. I was too ill to attend, I didn’t fancy my chances of swimming at that point in my illness, but I saw the pictures on facebook. I liked them.
Will never ticked off most of the things that he placed on his bucket list. He always resented Oliver for that. It is always someone else’s fault.
I broke the silence not long after Walida delivered the panang. Beautiful as always, salty from the fish sauce and shrimp paste, spicy from the chillies, sharp from the lime leaves and sweet from the muscavado sugar – worshipping the four pillars upon which Thai cooking is built.
“If you had all of the money in the world, where would you go?”
“I’ve never really thought about it,” Will said. He was polishing glasses. Walida would only be happy when she could see her face in them. “Working here, for mum, I’ll never have the money to travel anywhere but the airport and back.”
I nodded. It was true. Money was a limiting factor. Money – or my constant need for it - had stopped me from exploring the Earth, that and I had no real desire. You can’t be gay in a lot of countries. Does Grindr even work in Uganda?
“Where would you go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “Mexico, I guess. I really want to see the pyramids. I’d also like to see Zanzibar-”
“You are obsessed,” he laughed.
“Freddie Mercury is a legend.”
“Freddie Mercury is dead,” he responded. “It’s a bit creepy how obsessed you are with a dead guy.”
I was about to fire a snarky response when Will said something that would change my life:
“What the fuck is stopping you? Its not like you don’t have the money. Book a flight and go.”
***
The next day I quit my job and booked a flight to Mexico.
