F^%K PROPER! A Bangkok tale in which I nearly starve myself to death in an AXARA Paris dress, kiss Ryan Gosling AND George Clooney, get María Félix off my chest, and eat a knuckle sandwich
Bangkok is to food as the Kentucky Derby is to mint juleps. If your well runs dry, it ain’t nobody’s fault but your own. Here I am at my favorite food stall on Soi 38, buggin’ like a skinny meth man. It’s 11pm at night and this coconut shake is the first bit of sustenance to cross my lips since my breakfast noodles.
I’ve been working carpal-tunnel inducing hours, and I let myself get shanghaied into pinch-hosting an evening poetry reading. I worked through lunch. I skipped dinner. Blood sugar in your shoes? Who the f^%k cares — as long as they’re velvet.
Dress: AXARA Paris
Gold and pearl earrings: Norma Puga (Margot, Mexico City)
Pre-street food I got really kvetchy, and then I almost fainted. It took the coconut shake ( + duck noodle soup + som tam + mango avec sticky rice) to restore me to meaning and to sense. I looked around and then it occurred to me: f^%kin A, I’m in Bangkok!
F^%k tight polyester-blend dresses. F^%k skipping meals. F^%k pinch-hitting. A billion random, portentous things are happening in this city at any given moment. Why is his head wrapped in a red bow? Why does that boom mic look like a fuzzy dildo? What the F are they filming? I don’t need to know. I don’t even care. But if I miss one minute of it because I’m off somewhere being ‘proper,’ doing as I feel duty-bound, I’m gonna regret it.
It’s time for a threesome with Ryan Gosling and George Clooney. It’s time to go nuts in an elaborate mock-up; to match my teal jeans to my diorama. It’s time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions . . . . In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Do I dare disturb the universe? There’s only one thing to do on ‘Prapa’ Street. (Note the posh accent, bitches.) Jump up on the bridge-over-the-stinky-klong railing. Strike a pose. Make sure you’re rockin’ a María Félix t-shirt. If you’re going straight to hell, rest assured it’s always Ladies’ Night.
Why settle for mild-mannered Clark Kent when you can be Salvador Dali? Where I am it’s always summertime, and the living should be easy. Pedro smuggled my María Félix shirt all the way from Mexico City to Bangkok via the usual cartel route — Kampuchea. The rose petal, like me, was a refugee from Valentine’s Day. And the gold-leafed earrings set me back 20 baht (about 70 cents) at a street stall near Lumphini MRT.
White linen pants: Pin-Pin (my favorite tailor in Hoi An, Vietnam)
Belt: FlyNow (Bangkok)
Handbag: good ol’ Dooney & Burke
It is impossible to say just what I mean! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Shoulds and more shoulds are all you get for time served on Prapa Street. Below: I am wearing incredibly comfy hidden-wedge J. Crew Cece suede ballet flats in Mulberry to match Maria’s lips.
Is it this dainty pork knuckle that makes me so digress?
PS: VOTE FOR PEDRO. He gets me all my sweet shots.
