Fat Brits in football shirts, or skinny old men with shoulder-belted knapsacks and mini-laptop bags, but mostly wide-shouldered bloaters here, on what could be another Gary Glitter's street, for all the furtive faces sliming past and pretty faces, wanting money and one old lady on a blanket, aged outside beyond this economy this Thailand's Bangkok is imbued with supine ways, hand- -steepled bows and automatic, servile smiles, this country's people tell me theirs is a culture allergic to conflict, its corporate managers swerving through hoops to reprimand gently, obliquely excoriate so skilfully their underlings realise they wronged without feeling punished so keeping intact self respect for them to continue as king of a shrinking dominion of worth to their manager's world where, uncontradictorily, the world's fiercest male fighters kick jaws with an accuracy that puts fat Brits in football shirts to shame, while they lie to their women at home, here on Gary Glitter street, where beggar ladies creep behind bushes to piss, and Brits on the pull become kings with their cash and their cocks. There are ageing Brits who seem to live here, too, trapped, their faces say, by what must have felt once was their escape to here, these are the men beside older women on Gary Glitter street, maybe wives now, fat Brits in polo shirts returned to watch the skirts and smiles that were their destination out of lives in England long ago, with "I wanna do what I wanna do" echoing their erections' rudder steering them here to a dream that they stayed in, now watching their past lives return as tourists on a fuck-hunt, this time as resident, married to a dry dream, his oasis in front of him, his wife beside, he, perceptibly, dead inside.
