Malaysian Pirate

I've woken with a tremendous hunger this morning.  I wish I had something like a big Cinnabon.  Maybe I'll go out for a huge bacon and egg and potatoes and toast breakfast somewhere.  

Like I need it.  I'll end up on "My Six Hundred Pound Life" one day.  

But I have the miseries.  Mr. Tree's crew worked all day cleaning up my property.  It needed it--but not at that price.  What price?  I am too ashamed to tell you.  Still, when I watched the three fellows working all day, I knew it was not stuff I wanted to do.  Vines and undergrowth and. . . what the fuck are my yard guys doing?  They are a blow and go clan by and large.  

It's hard to get good help these days.  But I swear I'd do more of it myself if I had someone to do it with me.  Not even do it.  Just sit and cheer me on and help occasionally.  But deciding on a Saturday morning when you are thinking of a Cinnabon to go out and get down in the dirt and start digging out vines. . . . 

Nah.  

I was ensconced on the couch after dinner with the first after dinner drink watching what I said I would not watch when there came a tap tap tapping at my door.  And there was the Visage of Doom, Mr. Tree.  He wanted his money.  But he wanted more.  He wanted me to like him for taking my money.  I asked him if he wanted a drink and he said he was taking Dayquil and Niquil trying to get over his "cold" (just back from Cuba, so read Covid).  He asked me if I thought he could drink.  I said it was required.  So in the fading day, we sat on the deck and drank whiskey and I listened to his woes.  I'm a good listener, as I have often told you.  It is a big part of my substantial charm.  And the more he talked and the more he drank and the darker it got, the weirder were his tales.  He's trying to marry a Cuban doctor.  Turns out, this would be his 4th wife.  He is a dark skinned Indian Malaysian Catholic, a minority in his country, and he served as an officer in the Malaysian army.  And that is where the weird tales begin.  He married a Thai woman.  Thai's are notorious gamblers, or so I've been told by people who have been married to them, and she gambled away all of his money before they divorced.  His second wife was a surgeon, but she had a child with another man and could not leave the state without giving up her parental rights, so. . . . 

His third wife, like all the others if you believe the tales, cheated on him, so he decided to have sex with everyone he could in every country in the world.  Or something like that.  I'll spare you the details.  But telling me this with glasses of whiskey on an empty stomach (he was trying to get me to go to a Malaysian restaurant with him all evening) made him emotional.  

"You're my brother," he kept telling me.  He would get up and hug me and all I could think about was the Vid.  

But eventually, the matter of money had to be addressed.  I gave him a big chunk of it.  

"Fuck you," I said, "and all this brother shit.  I'll tell everybody what a pirate you are.  I'll spread it all over town."

"But I am giving you a special price, my brother." 

"Yea, you're giving me a special price alright.  You're giving me the big Fuck You price.  If I have anything to do with it, you'll never work in this town again."  

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Why?"

"Let's go to Cuba.  You're going to need someone to take care of you eventually.  There are women there. . . ." 

"Stop it.  What the fuck, Mr. Tree?"

"I promise you this.  My fiancé is a surgeon, and when she gets here, we'll take care of you."

"I already have a Death Doula," I said.  

Sometimes he doesn't know all the words.  

Finally, long past nine, his pockets full of my partial payment, he hurried off to eat before the restaurant closed.  

"C'mon, let's go eat."

"Get out of here, you Malaysian thief!"

The whiskey was almost gone.  It would be an early bed.  

What the fuck is wrong with people, I wondered?  Men.  All they think about is money and sex.  They are worse than animals.  At least animals only think about sex.  I shouldn't have given him the whiskey, I thought.  

Should I tell you about what awaits me in Penang?

"Come with me, my brother. . . ." 

No. I won't tell you.  I will not be going.  Even after he showed me photos of what might be waiting for me.  

I sat for awhile decompressing.  I was trying not to be sad about the money.  It's just money, right?  And the other things.  Then my mind drifted. . . the smell of frangipani, a beautiful woman. . . . 

But I'm starving now.  A big breakfast will set me straight.  The day is breaking.  It's time to get my lard ass to move.