"Holding On For Dear Life"
Part 2
By Alienist_hk@yahoo.com

NOTE: All Thai words and phrases have been spelled to help the reader pronounce them correctly.
Standard transliteration methods may vary.

**********

Sakjai was concentrating on managing the armload of books and papers he was buried under as he
tried to walk back to his auntie's house. She always calls it her house, so it's not his home. Not
really.

He hadn't even thought the phrase, "Going home" for months. That's not a strange thing. After all,
he hadn't had a real home to go to in almost a year.

And after today, it wouldn't matter anymore. He didn't plan on being at that house after tonight, so
it wasn't an issue either way.

Sakjai didn't think much anymore about how strange everything looked and felt here, either. When
he'd arrived in this up state New York town last month, he felt like he wasn't in the world anymore.
Well, his world anyway.

Which was true. Bangkok, Thailand was a place nobody here had ever been to. He doubted that
anybody would be able to find it on a map, either. His auntie was the only Thai person he'd met
since his arrival. Certainly nobody spoke his language. How strange it is not to hear your own
language all around you. Not from people, not from TV or the stereo, no Thai anywhere outside his
own head. Even his auntie insisted on English at her house, for the practice. So he didn't talk
much.

When he's been asked by his Social Studies teacher to get up in front of the class on his first day
there and tell everybody about where he came from, he'd been stunned by shock and frightened into
stumbling gibberish. He'd stood up on quivering legs that moved him by sheer habit to the front of
the class. He'd grabbed onto the teacher's desk like grim death and tried to smile while he thought
about what he would be able to say that wouldn't make him sound stupid or merely
incomprehensible because of his English.

He'd smiled and stared at the class for what had seemed like an eternity.

They had all stared back.

Gulp. And then, ever so softly, he had said, "I come from Thailand."

The teacher had made helpful inquiring noises, so he said, "My home was in Bangkok. Bangkok is
bigger than New York City, and is the capitol of my country." That came out a little bit proud, and
not so softly.

He'd been careful of the pronunciation, and had tried to speak each word clearly and distinctly.

He began to think that he'd done OK, when some girl turned to her friend and said, "Thailand?
Where's Thailand?" and giggled. A boy's voice from the back of the class had said, "Bang! Cock!"
and some of the other boys had sniggered.

The teacher had made shushing noises, and Sakjai didn't understand the boy's remark, except that
he hadn't said "Bangkok" correctly. So he tried to reply to the girl's question, hoping that it had
been a serious one.

"Thailand is a country about the same size as France. It is located in Southeast Asia. It borders on
Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia."

The teacher had tried to make "Isn't that interesting" noises and encouraged him to say more.

But the class had started gabbling among themselves. "Burma? Where's Louse? Is that a `lousy'
name or what?! Is that where the bugs come from? Cambodia, I've heard of that one. Where's
Asia? I thought China was in Asia..." and it seemed to go on and on.

He was still holding the teacher's desk up.

She had shushed everybody again, and nodded to Sakjai to take his seat, giving him an apologetic
smile. He'd sat down, or rather collapsed into his seat.

He was shocked and very puzzled. These students were so immature, so profoundly rude and
misbehaved. Thai schools are orderly, students utterly silent in presence of a teacher, and even
asking a question of the teacher was considered rude.

After all, if a mere student was implying that the teacher hadn't been clear in what he'd said,
couldn't a question about the teacher's comments be construed as insulting?

A totally different world it was, indeed.

His feeling like an outsider had already developed before he'd come to America. But nothing that
had happened here had led him to hope that his situation would ever improve much. He was 16,
going on 17 years old. That made him 2 years older than some of his classmates here.

Thai school systems aren't the same as America in determining the age of different grade levels.
And Middleboro's school counselors decided to put him in Ninth Grade to improve his English
skills and adjust to living in a new place, rather than immediately placing him in the High School,
where he should have been.

It was a well-intended decision, but he'd resented it. He'd been in High School for two years, by
Thai measurement. Of course, he wouldn't dream of complaining to anybody about it. That was
unimaginable.

Thank goodness he didn't really look any older than his average classmates. So everybody just
assumed he was their age. He wouldn't have told anyone anything different if they'd asked. It was
too humiliating.

After all, he's a good student, top third of the class at his school in Bangkok. And it had been one of
the better private schools there, too. He'd enjoyed soccer and occasional Thai kick-syle boxing
matches. He'd managed a few good friendships, although not a real "best friend" because of
embarrassment about his home situation.

All of his friends had been boys. He went to a boy's school, and there weren't a lot of opportunities
to meet girls in the life that he'd had constructed for him. That wasn't something he thought about,
because he'd never thought about sexual things very much anyway.

He'd never seen a girl he was attracted to physically. He'd never played around with any of his guy
friends either. That wouldn't have been an unusual thing in Thai life, but he never thought about it.

He knew that his dick was there, sure enough. And he was developing normally, as far as he knew.

Sometimes he got hard-ons in the shower or something. But he'd never developed masturbation as a
habit. He did it occasionally, every two or three weeks or so. But it wasn't anything he thought
about between times.

And when he did do it, he thought only about the pleasure he felt in the act itself. He never
fantasized about anybody else, boys or girls. He didn't fantasize at all, actually. It was just a
pleasant diversion from an otherwise depressing and isolated life.

His regular wet dreams were just something he had to clean up so the maids wouldn't giggle about it
too much.

So he'd been sort of getting through life, despite all the things that got him down and depressed
sometimes. He would have survived there.

But he'd had to come here.

He hated having to come here, but he'd had no real choice. The adults in his life had always told
him what he was going to do. He'd always tried to get on with it, and didn't want to cause anybody
any bother. The individual's rights to choose were not encouraged in Thai society, and certainly not
teenaged boys' rights.

Sakjai was his mother's only child, and he'd lived alone with her all his life until last year. She was
a low-level Bank employee. She had a respectable middle class career and the required Bachelor's
degree to prove it.

His father had never lived with them, he knew the man only vaguely from a distance. His mother
was his father's mistress, called "mee-ah noi", or "Minor Wife" in Thai. It wasn't anything unusual
in Thai culture, but it wasn't openly discussed either. The man had visited regularly, paid for the
apartment and living expenses, and also paid all his son's expenses, including very good private
schools and many other advantages.

But he also had a "Major Wife" who was the only one that was publicly acknowledged. She knew
about Sakjai and his mother, of course. She had to put up with the situation because all her own
children were girls. Sakjai was the only son, even if he was born of a minor wife. That fact gave
Sakjai's mother a certain amount of leverage and security.

Sakjai could have grown up, gone to college and gotten into a good career path, if that had all
remained in place. Even if he wouldn't ever have been terribly happy.

But his father had died in a car accident.

He left a large sum of money to be used to care for Sakjai and his mother, and his mother had
always handled all that. She did work in a bank, after all. He didn't think of it as his own
inheritance. He hadn't objected to what his mother had said, that she was deciding what to do with
it by right. That was Thai custom as well.

And then his mother had fallen in love.

She wanted to be married to her new love, and was completely consumed by this new relationship in
her life.

The new man was always nice to Sakjai, but insisted that if he and Sakjai's mother were to be
married, then Sakjai would be an embarrassing reminder to him of her former life. They wanted
children of their own.

So all of a sudden, Sakjai was superfluous. His presence was a bother. Practically overnight, he
was in the way. He could do nothing about it. He even agreed with the assessment. He was
obviously a nuisance, and hadn't ever been clever enough to get his father's attention. And now, his
mother had found a love more important to her than Sakjai.

So it was pretty plain that there was something not good enough in himself. Why else did nobody
seem to love him or want him around? It must be some deficiency in himself. There really wasn't
any other logical conclusion, and Sakjai had always tried to be a logical person. He was proud of
his reasoning powers.

So, in the usual Thai way, relatives were polled to determine who might be willing to take Sakjai
until he was old enough to be on his own, only another few years at most. Sakjai's mother even let
it be known that she would help pay his living expenses from the money left by his father.

He had gone to live with a distant cousin on his mother's side, with his wife and family. At first,
Sakjai had been relieved about that decision. At least it was still in Bangkok, and he could keep
attending the same school and seeing his few friends, and visiting his mother if she ever called him.

He wouldn't have dreamed of calling her first. That would be rude of him. That wasn't necessarily
Thai custom. It's just something he believed about himself. Don't intrude yourself. Don't be a
bother to anybody.

His mother had never called.

And things didn't work out with his cousin's family. The children needed lots of looking after, and
Sakjai was supposed to be kind of a Cinderella relative, unpaid help. They told him that he'd have
to drop out of school in order to get all the work done. Sakjai was heartbroken. But he never
thought that he could actually protest. It didn't even feel like an injustice being done to him. It just
felt awful, and inevitable. And he didn't want to be a bother to anybody. That was never a question
in his mind. It was an absolute belief.

So he had stopped going to school. He simply put away his school uniforms, which he had been a
bit proud of, and tried to get on with the work in the house. Without showing any sadness about it.
That would have been rude, and his cousin's family would have called him surly and ungrateful.

After two weeks absence, the school had called Sakjai's mother and asked why he wasn't there.

His cousin told her that Sakjai was shiftless, and wouldn't go to school, so they'd put him to work.
She called Sakjai and told him that he would be moved to another place that would make him buckle
down and study. Nobody had asked Sakjai for his side of the story.

He was so relieved that he would be leaving these people and get back to school at the same time!
He was seeing possible light at the end of his tunnel! He never thought to mention that his cousin
had lied about him.

That would have been terribly impolite. At least he thought so.

The only other person who was willing to take Sakjai was an older sister of his father's, living in the
States. Sakjai had never really met anybody from his father's family. Nobody amongst them had
really ever known her that well either. She had never kept in touch with most of them. She had
married well above her station in life, and had left the rest of them behind.

But that was a much smaller problem than having Sakjai around, and this relative had a very good
name. In Thai society, good names mean higher status. Higher status was always better, no matter
what. And she had agreed to take him!

So the decision was made for him. Yes, he'd get to be in school again. And be living with a high
status person, who had even declined the money his mother had offered for his support. She didn't
need the money. Sakjai's mother was very happy about that! All she did for Sakjai himself was set
up an auto pay account for him, US$500 per month. He never really thought about whether it was a
lot or a little. He didn't use much anyhow.

So here he was. A stranger in a strange land.

He hadn't believed it was all happening to him at first. It was that big a shock. He felt like he was
watching somebody else's life on a video. The brief hopeful light had guttered out.

His life was even less in his own control than it had ever been before. He was living (if that was the
right word for this existence) in a totally incomprehensible environment. The weather was strange to
him. His eyes sought out familiar cues, and saw none. Nothing smelled the same as at home. The
quality of the light wasn't even the same. Nothing was. He was a complete and utter outsider.

Nobody seemed able to understand him, let alone befriend him. His Auntie was OK, in a distant
way. She let it be known that he was old enough to take care of himself, that as an aging widow she
had no knowledge of or interest in young people. He was expected to do well in school and not get
in anybody's way. Same theme, everywhere he had ever been able to look.

Auntie's house was clean and tidy and impersonal. Even his room was still in HER house, and
neither of them saw it as his private space. His new caretaker wasn't even home half the time. She
had a spacious apartment, lot of friends, and a social life down in New York City. That was almost
two hours drive away. And Auntie had never imagined that she would make any major changes in
her own life, simply because of the addition of a lone teenage boy to the household. That's what
domestic staff is for.

The housekeeper fed Sakjai and did all the chores. He was deprived even of some familiar activity
like that. The housekeeper was pleasant, but she was a servant. It would have been considered rude
for her to try and be his friend. And she didn't live in. So she felt sorry for him from a distance.

Sakjai had practically nothing to do and nobody to do it with, anyway. He hadn't even been out
exploring. He called the town "Middle-boring" instead of Middleboro. And then giggled to
himself, as he realized that he'd made his first joke in English.

And then he'd cried, knowing that he had nobody he could share the joke with.

All these things were drifting through his mind as he trudged toward his auntie's house, his arms
heavy with the entire contents of his school locker. But he remembered all these things sort of from
a distance, far removed now from feelings about any of it. If he'd tried to feel more about his plight,
he would have felt nothing more than out of control and desperately sad and alone.

He'd never been much of a worrier, he wasn't the type. Perhaps it was that he'd never advanced to
the worrying level. His bad days were more hopeless and overwhelmed than they were anxious. It
was difficult for him to muster any feeling much more than coping with the day at hand, and hoping
that tomorrow wouldn't be awful.

He didn't allow his hopes to amount to much. He was pretty sure that tomorrow would generally be
bland, at best. The past month had proven to him that even his pessimism wasn't as bad as this
reality had become.

He was totally alone, isolated in a cocoon of other people's making, and he was quietly and politely
smothering in the darkness and despair that had become his life.

He didn't want to be a bother to anybody. He didn't even believe that he was really worth bothering
about. Nobody had ever taught him that he was worth it.

Last night in his bed, he'd tried to think of something that he could do for himself, since nobody else
was ever going to reach out and help him. If nobody cared about him, then he had to do something
for himself, something that he could control on his own without any bother.

The small comfort that school provided (at least it was something to do and somewhere to go) was
now over. It seemed like an endless age before classes would start again. And even then, why
should he think that being at school would ever be a really good reason to stay here?

So he'd decided last night that he wasn't going to stay, trapped in the spider's web that was his life.

Sakjai was going away. Tonight.

He knew how he was going to leave, and never occurred to him that anybody would care.

If only he could struggle through this one last day somehow.

Then tonight he could be gone.

"I'm almost finished," Sakjai told himself. "Almost to her house. Only a few more blocks. Not
long until tonight."

"Then I can go. Not long..."

"Books are so heavy. Just a few more blocks. Never mind...."

"Just think about getting there."

"Get" (puff). "To" .

"The". (puffing more) "House."

"Hot today, finally it's warm enough here... It's been cold ever since I arrived. Never been so
cold."

"Stop thinking, mustn't think now. Just get to the house".

"Lay down until it's night. Then you can go".

"You can go soon. Just lay down for a few hours..."

"Get to the house. Then you can go."

"Lay down. Then go"

"Go. Can go..."

He'd stopped walking. He didn't notice, but now he was just standing on the sidewalk in the middle
of the block. More like swaying actually.

"Lay down...Go..."

In his mind, he felt like a huge dark hole had just appeared in front of him, getting bigger, it's edges
crumbling the concrete he was standing on.

As the sidewalk crumbled, Sakjai felt himself about to fall into the darkness of some vast depth
below him.

He wasn't alarmed, only a bit surprised.

"Going? Going now?"

" Now?"

"Oh.... Now."

Outwardly, had he been aware of himself physically, he would have seen what Jimmy saw.

_______________________________________________________________________

End of Holding On For Dear Life"
Part 2

The term "Alienist" was the first professional title used by psychiatrists and psychologists in the
1890's. These pioneer counselors and therapists were thought to be working with people who were
"alienated" from others and from themselves. That's still true today, isn't it?