Chapter 55

....or not to B. A story of Friendship

When I was sixteen years old I met a guy called Graham. We were as different
as two peas in a pod are not. He was a stocky, fit game winner.
Not just a player but a man you needed on your side. He was the local area
snooker champion, shot pigeons on the local farm and was an excellent
badminton player.

He clearly had a good eye, mostly for the local girls.

He was charming and a committed Tory party young farmers club member.
I remember arguing about Maggie Thatcher with him. “She’s brilliant – she’s
so strong” he would say. “Yes Graham but she’s frequently wrong” never
seemed to elicit a rational response.

Graham very rarely read books or anything else but was a fund of useful ideas. He invented a game with a pingpong ball on the end of a vertical string. You sat either side of it and attempted to slap the ball into the other person’s face. He won everytime. He also rode a motorbike like there was no tomorrow.

So what did we have in common? Not a lot I guess except for an all consuming interest in the other sex. However despite all this we became best friends. This friendship lasted until Graham died from a heart attack when he was in his mid forties. Another of the things that Graham did, that I didn’t, was to smoke cigarettes.
I felt cheated when he died. He was the guy who was going to sit round the fire with me, when we got ancient, drinking whisky and reminiscing about the old times.

Graham I sure miss you.


Now I spend my winters in Phuket where I watch the world go by, shaking my head in sorrow and sometimes disbelief at the antics of both farangs and locals. It is as though no lessons ever get learned and each person has to make all the same mistakes.

This unfortunately includes me.

The relationship between me and khun Bee has come to an end.

We were not lovers and not just good friends. We were best friends.
She would ask me for advice on subjects as varied as what colour car to buy and what should she do about the fact that the man she was apparently sleeping with refused to have the air-conditioning on because it kept him awake.
My answers were of course strictly confidential, but white is a good colour for a car.

I have often stated that Bee is the only girl in the whole of Thailand that I could ever imagine being married to. This does not mean that I want to marry her but that the warmth of our relationship was something very special.
You may have noted the ‘was’ in that sentence.
Yes indeed ‘was’ is the right word.

This season something has been different. Previously we had met several times a week for lunch, dinner, drinks and whatever. This time the frequency these meetings had decreased.
Except for about a dozen meetings with Bee and her brother, whose English I was helping to improve, I scarcely saw her.
After he went back to Bangkok I thought I would see more of Bee.
Not so.
In the first two weeks of January after several querying phone calls I spent an afternoon on the beach with khun Bee followed by drinks at a rather splendid cocktail-bar and a trip to a massage parlour.
These were the only times I had alone with her.
Something was clearly wrong. My guess was, of course, that there was another man involved.
I sms’d a direct question on this. The reply was “No no no don’t jump to conclusions I’ll have dinner with you tomorrow”.
We had dinner and life was good.
Then contact became difficult again. She had at one stage mentioned to me that she had a Canadian client (he had hired a car from her) who could also help her brother with his English.
I thought no more of it until a mutual friend, a Thai lady mentioned that she thought that I was wasting my time with Bee because she was seeing a Canadian guy.

The wonderful and awful thing about txt messaging is that one has a record of what happens.
It is good that one can clarify what has happened. It is awful that one can see how badly one behaves in this sort of situation.
By now I was getting a little irritated. At a party, at khun Aor’s Coffee Bar, Bee came to see me and then spent the whole evening engrossed by the gangnam style dancing of a young farang. I hardly got a word in edgeways.
Half way through the party I went for a swim in the sea to cool down. When I returned she hadn't noticed that I had left.
The young farang was with a Chinese girl who was not actually his girlfriend.
Bee went home relatively early and sent me a txt to say she got home ok.
Always a worry with motorbikes habitually ridden in a less than sober state.

A little later I, to my dying shame, sent her a txt telling her that the Chinese girl had left.
She replied somewhat angrily “What do you mean, What do you want?”
I stupidly replied “You”.

She didn’t meet me all week.

The following weekend there was another party at the Coffee Shop. She arrived with Jim, a Canadian – just a friend.
I was shaken but managed to keep my cool whilst engaging him in conversation. He seemed a nice guy.
After about a quarter of an hour my cool collapsed. I got on my bike and left at high speed.

The ensuing txt messages to her were not cool.

I suggested that she had been bloody bad mannered to just spring Jim on me – she could have at least warned me.
But "no" she replied that Jim ,like me, is just a friend. “and he doesn’t ‘pull’ me like you do”.
I think that was a reference to my marriage comments.

Yes, yes, just a friend who she had been out with until five the previous morning and a friend whose company she preferred to mine.
I think I got the message.
My best friend status had clearly been usurped.

The following frenetic sms’s have, alas, ensured that not only am I not her best friend any more but that I won’t be seeing her at all.
That is a great shame.

It is two weeks since this happened – It has taken me that long to cool down enough to string a few sentences together.

So khun Bee I bid you a very fond farewell and perhaps I will not risk having another best friend.

Footnote: As a last fling I sent the following sms to khun Bee.
                 I think it sums up my feelings quite well and I hope she
                 understands:

                  ปีที่แล้วคุณเป็นเพื่อน ที่ดีที่สุดของผม
                  ผม เจอ คุณ บ่อย มาก
                  ผมดีใจมากขึ้น
                  ปีนี้เพื่อนสนิท ของคุณ เป็น คน อื่น
                  ผมเลยไม่คอยเจอกันคุณ
                  ผมเสียใจมากขึ้น

                  แต่มันช่วยผมเรียนภาษาไทย :-)

Translation:

                  Last year you were my best friend
                  We met a lot
                  I was very happy
                  This year your best friend is somebody else
                  I do not meet you much
                  I am very sad

                  but it does help me learn Thai :-)