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When you’re young and like to party there’s no finer place to go for Christmas than Thailand. That is exactly what my good friend Nate, my long term girlfriend, Cathy, and I ended up doing many years ago.
I was no stranger to Thailand back then, having been there at least half a dozen times. I was also no stranger to the diet pills freely available in the drug stores there. In fact, the first time I’d been to Thailand a few years previously I’d done myself quite considerable damage after a month of LSD and pink and whites, as we called the speed pills.
In Bangkok we loaded up our little drug case with a pharmaceutical array of treats. The man in the drug store gave a hearty laugh as he threw in a small packet of pills for free, a bonus for spending so much money.
Koh Phangan was the obvious destination; we’d been there before and knew a few people who were going to be there. We arrived and settled into our holiday routine: hanging out at the bungalows all day, getting stoned, eating and drinking too much, and venturing out to a bar for a shimmy every second or third night.
Great times were had by all. We met up with friends old and new, and were having a most enjoyable holiday. Until… well, until the night we took the free pills. The full moon had come and gone, and it was a relatively quiet night that the three of us chose to go out and throw down these little white pills along with the usual concoction.
The next morning we awoke in mighty bad shape, none of us knowing what had transpired the night before. It turned out that we collectively lost about five hours of the night. None of us had a clue what had happened. Nate went off in search of some friends to try and piece the puzzle together, leaving me and Cathy to have the fight that was so evidently brewing.
Cathy was mad, not just at that moment, she was mad pretty much full time. I recently watched a show about bipolar disorder and did her the favour of a diagnosis. Sadly, this came a little late, as all this happened years ago and we broke up quite soon after our trip to Thailand and I have no idea where she is now. Our relationship was rocky at best, and we had spent much of it apart. Under the umbrella of my relationship with Cathy I had slept with more women than I had before I met her, or have since. And she is the only woman I have ever been unfaithful to.
So, back to Thailand and the fight that was about to happen. As soon as Nate left us alone, Cathy went ballistic on me - going ballistic was one of her specialties. I asked her what I had done this time, and she told me that although she had as little recollection of the previous night as me and Nate, she had awoken that morning remembering just one thing: that I had confessed to her that I had slept with a prostitute when I’d gone on holiday without her a couple of months previously.
Now, I’m all for recreational drugs, but what had this man given us? Some kind of truth serum? This would have gone through my mind if I wasn’t vainly attempting to tell Cathy that it wasn’t true, that she must have imagined I’d said it. The fact is that it was perfectly true, and although I wasn’t sorry for the deed, I was plenty sorry that I had confessed. Cathy kindly furnished me with enough details of my confession for me to know that I hadn’t just told her what I’d done, I had gone into quite some detail!
Nate returned, having found out nothing of where we had been the previous night, and surely glad to enjoy the tense atmosphere between Cathy and I which lasted well beyond the holiday. I was left to face up to the fact that during our lost evening the only thing I had achieved was sending my relationship with my girlfriend in to yet another downward spiral, having added to the many transgressions that we threw at each other in the numerous fights ahead of us.
Looking back on that time from the relative wisdom of middle age I do ask myself what the fuck I was doing – on so many levels.
Happy days indeed! |
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