"I give you rose. You give me one dollar."
"You give me one dollar. I give you one dollar."
"No!"
So was the exchange between yours truly and the Sisowath Blvd. dirt gremlin one night prior to my death. Not that rose peddlers were an uncommon sight in Phnom Penh, but this one didn't even try to mask his sinister background by wandering alone and away from his master.
His red-eyed mother, the reaper of her little runt's rewards, reeked of meth and stood not ten feet from him, staring on indifferently. She was wearing a cotton Buffalo Bills football jersey (Cornelius Bennett, circa 1990) with greasy discharge stains all up and down the sleeves. We were unaware of this at the time, but she frequented the slums of Phnom Penh where she occasionally watched after her kids and habitually prostituted herself for a dirty needle, a shoelace and some heroin cut with baking soda, paint and head lice. The scabs on her arms were bleeding a brownish-red fluid which, I'm sure, smelled lovely. At least she wasn't an amputee - yet.
As I was not in the company of a lady, I wasn't in the market for a rose. Rather, I was greatly in the market for a beer, so we sat down at an outdoor table (it was a beautiful, muggy evening) at the Happy Frog Cafe. Bryan was intent on polluting both of our systems and thus ordered a pair of Angkor Beers and a pack of Angkor cigarettes to accompany. We opened our menus, scanning for what might be the best of the mediocre and overpriced dishes and before the words "I would like to order a club sandwich" could come out of my mouth, the Beyonce of Phnom Penh challenged us to a bout of Jenga. We accepted, and subsequently ordered club sandwiches.
Beyonce placed the pieces of Jenga on the far-from-level and warped table. Her sweaty cleavage was being presented to Bryan while she arranged the tower, entrancing him. His vulnerabilities were visible to the masses while her shiny bosom did a private go-go gyration dance for him. He was as a shark is when overturned: tranquil and indifferent.
I wasn't quite the picture of mental and physical invincibility either. My face took on a sickly expression as I witnessed a passerby, a woman in a dirty, faded blue dress, blow a snot rocket, which stuck to her hand. She proceeded to attempt to fling it towards the ground, but the mucus wad stretched out even further and whipped around, adhering itself onto her forearm. She wiped it on her dress in submission to its perseverance, sat on the curb on the opposite side of the street, facing us, and breastfed the baby that she was holding in her other arm, coughing like a crackwhore.
Neither of these incidents would have seemed like anything beyond the bizarre everyday goings on of the streets of southeast Asia had The Happy Frog not been playing an awful Khmer death metal album. The aggressive and evil soundtrack made the situation surreal. Unsettling. Borderline inhospitable. Our beers, cigarettes and club sandwiches were then served and Beyonce pulled the first piece from the tower.
It was particularly menacing to me that as we began our match, the junky mother and her little rose entrepreneur watched our every move from the slights of our hands while removing pieces of the Jenga puzzle to the way we wiped beads of mayonnaise from the corners of our mouths. The child was no doubt sizing us up in one way or another, for what, we were yet unaware. Regardless, he and his mother fired up a nugget of crystal meth out of an empty Coke can on the apparently lawless street.
Unsurprisingly, the club sandwiches were forgettable. The incident which followed was not. As the Jenga tower grew more porous by the minute, it teetered desperately. Beyonce urinated in Bryan's apple juice by successfully removing another piece after Bryan had previously thought she was fudged. The evening breeze practically wrecked the fragile remains of the puzzle. As he contemplated his next, and likely his final, move of the showdown, the dirt gremlin jumped up in an amphetamine-induced craze, darted in the direction of Bryan and Beyonce, eyes wild, mouth foaming, and effortlessly snatched a keystone piece of the tower at full speed without disturbing it in the slightest. He barked like a starving hyena. Bryan and I stared on in amazement, flabbergasted. Beyonce slapped him firmly on the side of his head with a menu and he retreated to his mother, dropping the puzzle piece into a stagnant puddle on the side of Sisowath.
The profound feat negotiated by the dirt gremlin would have been long dismissed as luck had he not repeated it in each of the next two games of Jenga at the same decisive moment.
It had become my humble opinion, although short-lived, that smoking meth is not fair when playing Jenga, so long as both parties are not equally under the influence. I trust you will concur.
"You give me one dollar. I give you one dollar."
"No!"
So was the exchange between yours truly and the Sisowath Blvd. dirt gremlin one night prior to my death. Not that rose peddlers were an uncommon sight in Phnom Penh, but this one didn't even try to mask his sinister background by wandering alone and away from his master.
His red-eyed mother, the reaper of her little runt's rewards, reeked of meth and stood not ten feet from him, staring on indifferently. She was wearing a cotton Buffalo Bills football jersey (Cornelius Bennett, circa 1990) with greasy discharge stains all up and down the sleeves. We were unaware of this at the time, but she frequented the slums of Phnom Penh where she occasionally watched after her kids and habitually prostituted herself for a dirty needle, a shoelace and some heroin cut with baking soda, paint and head lice. The scabs on her arms were bleeding a brownish-red fluid which, I'm sure, smelled lovely. At least she wasn't an amputee - yet.
As I was not in the company of a lady, I wasn't in the market for a rose. Rather, I was greatly in the market for a beer, so we sat down at an outdoor table (it was a beautiful, muggy evening) at the Happy Frog Cafe. Bryan was intent on polluting both of our systems and thus ordered a pair of Angkor Beers and a pack of Angkor cigarettes to accompany. We opened our menus, scanning for what might be the best of the mediocre and overpriced dishes and before the words "I would like to order a club sandwich" could come out of my mouth, the Beyonce of Phnom Penh challenged us to a bout of Jenga. We accepted, and subsequently ordered club sandwiches.
Beyonce placed the pieces of Jenga on the far-from-level and warped table. Her sweaty cleavage was being presented to Bryan while she arranged the tower, entrancing him. His vulnerabilities were visible to the masses while her shiny bosom did a private go-go gyration dance for him. He was as a shark is when overturned: tranquil and indifferent.
I wasn't quite the picture of mental and physical invincibility either. My face took on a sickly expression as I witnessed a passerby, a woman in a dirty, faded blue dress, blow a snot rocket, which stuck to her hand. She proceeded to attempt to fling it towards the ground, but the mucus wad stretched out even further and whipped around, adhering itself onto her forearm. She wiped it on her dress in submission to its perseverance, sat on the curb on the opposite side of the street, facing us, and breastfed the baby that she was holding in her other arm, coughing like a crackwhore.
Neither of these incidents would have seemed like anything beyond the bizarre everyday goings on of the streets of southeast Asia had The Happy Frog not been playing an awful Khmer death metal album. The aggressive and evil soundtrack made the situation surreal. Unsettling. Borderline inhospitable. Our beers, cigarettes and club sandwiches were then served and Beyonce pulled the first piece from the tower.
It was particularly menacing to me that as we began our match, the junky mother and her little rose entrepreneur watched our every move from the slights of our hands while removing pieces of the Jenga puzzle to the way we wiped beads of mayonnaise from the corners of our mouths. The child was no doubt sizing us up in one way or another, for what, we were yet unaware. Regardless, he and his mother fired up a nugget of crystal meth out of an empty Coke can on the apparently lawless street.
Unsurprisingly, the club sandwiches were forgettable. The incident which followed was not. As the Jenga tower grew more porous by the minute, it teetered desperately. Beyonce urinated in Bryan's apple juice by successfully removing another piece after Bryan had previously thought she was fudged. The evening breeze practically wrecked the fragile remains of the puzzle. As he contemplated his next, and likely his final, move of the showdown, the dirt gremlin jumped up in an amphetamine-induced craze, darted in the direction of Bryan and Beyonce, eyes wild, mouth foaming, and effortlessly snatched a keystone piece of the tower at full speed without disturbing it in the slightest. He barked like a starving hyena. Bryan and I stared on in amazement, flabbergasted. Beyonce slapped him firmly on the side of his head with a menu and he retreated to his mother, dropping the puzzle piece into a stagnant puddle on the side of Sisowath.
The profound feat negotiated by the dirt gremlin would have been long dismissed as luck had he not repeated it in each of the next two games of Jenga at the same decisive moment.
It had become my humble opinion, although short-lived, that smoking meth is not fair when playing Jenga, so long as both parties are not equally under the influence. I trust you will concur.
