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I Remember

The night before the night before I stood in front of the window. It went from floor to ceiling, a towering view of the Chap Phraya River hurtling through the city. On the other side was a lit up Coca-Cola ad, a rickshaw going past, a culture playing Little Boy Lost. I was many floors up and looking up at the sky I saw the thunderclouds come in. The air got so hot and thick that you could taste the ozone, you could hear the effort of every wing of every fly, you could feel the scents of spicy food hit your pores and throat, coating it with heat and rhythm. The clouds rolled in at the same time you did.

And when they both arrived, I knew I was lost.

I remember the clouds ripping apart in their haste to purge. They opened up with a rage that I had never seen in a storm, not even in my times of darkest Texas summer nights. When the skies exploded the air cooled instantly, locking beads of sweat to my neck, to my lower back, to the bend in my elbows and fold behind my knees. I took huge gulping breaths of the air, teasing in the rain of ten thousand rice fields, making bliss out of the freedom of oppressive heat. The sound of the rain was cacophonous, drowning out the everyday noises and making us huddle closer to escape the fury, to simply hear.

Then you came into view.

I knew you before that night.

I knew you long before that night.

That night of the thunderstorm I knew my abnegation would crumble.

You strolled up the wooden parquet to the restaurant, where several of us were. I remember thinking you were remarkable then. You were always remarkable, from the very beginning. I hated how I was aware of you, more aware than I had ever been of anyone in my life. I knew where you were in any given room. I knew what you were looking at.

I craved your approval. I was disgusted with myself. I writhed.

That night over orchid blossoms and sweating beer glasses I watched as a curl of smoke from your cigarette made its way over your finger while you stood by the pagoda doorway. I saw you twist your neck, curling it to hasten the steam away from the table. I saw a flash of lightening across the river. Leaves dripped rain in slow motion, flower petals drowned in excruciating detail, and the snap of a waiter's white linen bleached me. You moved slowly, talking to someone else, and I knew I was no longer in control.

The deluge continued outside as my senses rioted inside.

The next night I could tell you the exact distance you were from my chair because I felt it on the back of my neck the entire night., a heat source from you singing the small hairs that curl at the bottom of my scalp. I made my excuses early. I saw another woman (that bitch) sizing you up. I don't compete.

The night after that was the one you took my hand. I had planned on an early evening, but you beckoned me to join the party. I threw on a yellow sundress (that yellow sundress) and my last pair of clean knickers, a racy black thong that had hastily thrown into my suitcase for some reason, that pair that made me feel my hip bone swivel out of the top waistband with every stride I made. I felt constrained, I felt confused, I felt like someone else, I felt the drums playing in my back and the day's heat in my chin and the bright lights and drunken laughter of all of our colleagues in my every step I took into that room. I could slink, I could unfurl, I was liquid in every part of my body.

And later that night you took my hand, you bastard, and you took my world and blew it apart forever.

We were not the first to fall in love in Bangkok - sleazy, tawdry, sweaty - and we will not be the last.

But no one - no one - had that thunderstorm and ache in their hipbones the way I did.

And I still feel it, baby. I still feel it.

-H.