Drunken Love by Que Son (to read list TXT) 📖

coffee shops and read and talked with his friends who were dropouts like him. They were a bunch of drifters. Then at the usual hour in the middle of the afternoon, he would go back home. This affair went on for months until he did not bother to get out of bed in the morning anymore. And that was when his parents asked him what was happening to him and he told them that he had stopped going to school because he did not like it anymore. His parents were dismayed and asked him what he was going to do now. He said he did not know and asked them to leave him alone. Now that he did not have to pretend to go to school any morning any more, he slept late and stayed up late. When he was awake, he would go to the coffee shops and sit with a book and a cup of black coffee and he would sit for hours and hours.

 

Adam remembered that the whole nation at that time was in a deep economic crisis. Now thinking back, however, he did not blame the Communists entirely for the people's suffering, even though their eventually wrong economic policies had prolonged the pain--unnecessarily. Lao Tzu said that famine always follows a great war. After 80 years of oppression and exploitation by the French colonists, the country had gone through twenty five years of brutal war, millions died, and the land was devastated by years of American bombing. And even after the killing had stopped and peasants returned to the rice field, they continued to be blown up by the forgotten land mines and ordinances.

 

Facing hunger, many had to take to the railroad to buy and sell whatever of values, and the police cracked down hard on these commercial activities because they, as Communists, did not condone private enterprise, and they did not care that people were only trying to make living. Adam hopped the train too, but not to buy and sell anything. He was riding the train because he was restless and had nothing to do. He was seventeen years old, still growing, his mind was still young, he was inexperienced, and was sensitive like any adolescents.

 

His first wet dream happened when he was perhaps fifteen. He dreamed he was naked in bed with a black woman--even though he had never seen a black woman--and it felt real good and he ejaculated. He woke up to find his underwear wet with a sticky substance, and it had a weird smell. He did not know how the hell that happened but it felt pretty good. But he never masturbated. He did not know he could massage his own penis to give himself orgasm. He learned that only later and in a very special environment: prison. That was how stupid he was. But he did notice that his penis sometimes raised itself and got hard when it made contact with the coarse fabrics of his shorts. That happened often when he walked; and when that happened, his face turned red for shame and he had to walk slowly and cover the area between his legs with his books so people would not see the erection. Or he would stop and turn his back to the street and hold his breath until the erection went away.

 

When not riding the trains, Adam would sit in the coffee shops all days and nights to read and discuss philosophy with his friends. He devoured the literature of the existential writers like Sartre and Camus and Nietzsche. He was especially impressed with the novels of Dostoievski. He also read the poetry of Bui Giang whose stanzas he encountered for the first time and was fascinated by the language this mad genius used: it was strange, beautiful and liberating--this poet was a word-magician. Adam also read Pham Cong Thien's books and what he found so attractive about this author was his passionate criticism of modern literature. He loved Thien’s essays on Henry Miller, Hemingway, Rimbaud, Appolinaire and Beaudelaire. These books were banned by the new regime because of their "decadent" content, of not being in line with the revolutionary spirit of the time. But Adam some how got hold of these books, mostly from the flea market, and he read them with a passion, then passed them on to his friends. He internalized all he read and lived as the philosophy dictates. What philosophy? That life was a terminal sickness and had no meaning and the mission of man on earth was to get drunk and high as much and as often as he could so he could escape from reality, no matter how short-lived the escapes were; that insanity was an appropriate response to life; and that suicide was the ultimate and justified revolt against life. So whenever Adam managed to find money, he would buy rice wine and drink with his friends until they were all drunk like pigs and did crazy things.

 

One afternoon he and a friend shared a big bottle of rice wine--and he was drunk. But he was not having a blackout. He was conscious and knew what was going on around him, but had no control over what he was doing. What he thought of doing when he was drunk, he did it. There was no thinking twice. That afternoon after finishing the bottle, he and the friend walked along the river bank, feeling great, elated, floating, supercharged, as if on top of the world. Then all of a sudden they saw a cop abusing a man. They approached the cop and asked him to leave the poor man alone. The cop was not armed even though he was in uniform. He judged the situation quickly and realized that he was no match for Adam and his friend. He was one and they were two, and he was unarmed, so immediately he let the man go and beat it. As the cop walked away, glancing back at the drunken boys with sinister looks, Adam felt that he had done a good deed and felt good about it. After the cop disappeared, he and the friend continued to walk then sat down on the sidewalk to rest and continued to feel invincible. They sat there looking at the green trees and the blue sky and it was wonderful to be drunk. Then out of nowhere three guys came running toward them, all carrying AK 47s. They surrounded Adam and his friend and Adam recognized the cop whom just minutes before they had humiliated. The offended cop jumped on them and hit them with a rifle butt, perhaps two or three times each. Adam did not see what happened to his friend but blood was coming out of his own mouth. By then the elation was gone. Then the cops took the two friends to the precinct and tied them up and locked them in separate rooms. They asked Adam where he lived, then left him alone. Hours later when it was way past dinner time, his father appeared and took him home.

 

Adam drank whenever he had money, and he get money by selling what he had and what the family had. After selling all the clothes and the books he owned, he took things from the house and sold them too. Things like LP records, cassette tapes, his father's books, and they were sold by the kilos. Eventually he was left with only a pair of pants and a shirt which he wore during the day and washed at night. His parents now considered him a lost boy, beyond redemption, and they looked at him hopelessly, not knowing what to do to save him from the crisis he was in. Every morning, while Adam was still sleeping his father put a few coins and a couple cigarettes on the night table for him. That was how desperate his father was about him: he was afraid that if the rotten son had no money for coffee and cigarettes, he would take things from the house and sell them. Adam was like a mad person--and only seventeen.

 

One day a friend introduced Adam to marijuana. Unlike Adam this friend was still in school but they saw each other almost everyday. There was a guy in a house near the market who sold the stuff. For five dongs, the guy would sell a small paper packet with dried grass in it--a nickel bag--and it could be rolled into two big joints. That Saturday morning Adam and the friend sat in Adam's living room and there was only his brother downstairs in the entire big house. It was a bright morning. Then they smoked the weed. Adam coughed. Moments later his senses started to alter and reality began to vibrate. The colors became intense and vibrant. He looked at the wall in front of him and saw scenes of Paris out of the green moss that was growing on it. It was fascinating. They talked and their voices became amplified and the words they spoke suddenly carried strange and special meanings. He looked at his legs and suddenly the legs became elongated. He reached out to touch his friend's shoulder but felt that the friend was so far away and his hand just kept stretching out and never reached the friend. Even the cigarette he was smoking seemed never to burn out, and the white fume danced slowly in elaborated patterns. Then the friend said: "Close your eyes and relax," and Adam closed his eyes and the friend started to sing. What a voice! And how sweet the lyrics were. It was a song by Vu Thanh An…A stream of white smoke takes you into oblivion…The lovers reverently gave up their bodies to one another one afternoon…Those were the words that he remembered his friend was singing. And as he closed his eyes and listened, Adam saw in his mind a desert at night with a sky full of stars and the voice flied in and filled up not only the desert but the whole universe and the voice was the only thing alive. Adam didn't know how much time had passed. Then they came out for a walk, and Adam felt that the distance he had to walk to get to the door seemed like infinity, and when he felt that he would never reached the door, he panicked. But eventually he came out of the house, and noises on the streets suddenly became distant and the houses and the people looked dreamy and far away. From that day on, Adam added marijuana to his daily chemical intakes.

 

Adam had another friend who was a heroin addict. And one thing led to another, because soon, Adam was shooting heroin too. This kind of heroin was not the white powder stuff but were little chunks of black-colored and hardened jelly which had to be cooked in water until melted then shot into the veins. Adam knew the city had an army of addicts to this kind of drug. One guy described the sensation while under the influence of the drug with an improvised song: When the needle goes into the veins, I feel like I am flying in a pink sky; when the needle goes into the veins, I feel like I am flying in a blue sky. This friend and Adam sometimes shot the shit together on the roof top of his house, or in the public bathrooms in the bus station. But Adam did not like the feeling this drug gave him. After the black liquid went into his veins and he lied down, Adam felt as if the whole weight of the earth was going down on him. It made him sluggish and stupid. So Adam never bought the stuff, and he did not become addicted to it. He preferred marijuana, which altered his sense perceptions and transported him into another reality, he liked the hallucinations that he found interesting and