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

his eyes. The room was dark but the window was open and light from the street lamp came through and allowed him to see an ivory white form of a female body: it was proportionate, with long legs, a flat belly, and her chest was pulsing with every breath. She still did not say a word, but he had started to touch her, first on her belly then up the torso then to the breasts, and the sudden contact with the coolness of her skin sent a delightful shudder down his spine. So that was how the female body was supposed to feel like, cool like marble and smooth like silk. The sensation excited and dazzled him. Then the woman asked him to hurry up, and without waiting, took his aching penis and guided it into her. It was a painful penetration and Adam could see the woman's face contorted every time he pushed. He knew he was supposed to push when his penis was inside her. It felt strangely good when his penis caressed against the wall of her tight vagina, a sensation he had never felt before. But there was very little lubrication. Then suddenly he ejaculated, and with the release, his breath as well as the woman's immediately slowed down as if a heavy burden had suddenly been lifted. Then his penis slowly returned to its normal size and was ejected from her closing vagina. He rolled over and tried to catch his breaths. So, that was what fucking was all about, he thought. She asked him if this was his first time and he said yes and she did not say anything more. Adam paid her then put his clothes on and walked out.

 

His friend was outside the door. "Why so fast?" The friend asked. "How do I know?" Adam said. It must have been past midnight. The next morning he did not get up until noon.

 

One afternoon about a month later, he saw the woman again. She was walking alone on an empty street, her hair was a mess, her pajama all wrinkled and dirty, and she had the look of a wounded animal. He even thought she looked like a mad woman. Adam knew it was the woman who had taken his virginity. He had no doubt it was her, and he wondered what had happened. Some months later he saw her again, this time on the ferry crossing the river, she was singing for handouts, the way street musicians/beggars did, and with her was a small girl no more than ten years old. And they were both in rags.

 

Eventually the authority had enough with Adam's non-conforming ways. He had never attended a political meeting, refused to join any organizations, and evaded mandatory labor services that all young people were required to do once in a while, things like clearing jungles or digging irrigation canals. All he did was getting high and drunk. Adam was a bad citizen and the cops now decided to bring him into line.

 

One afternoon they sent him a notice to report to the district police station to discuss "important matters." He knew that this day would come. He thought the matter overnight and decided to not to run. Just give up, he said to himself. In the morning, he walked to the police station, showed the notice to the cop at the front desk who looked at him, smiled and told him to wait, then disappeared into the back. Minutes later the cop came out with another cop and they asked him to follow them to the back then shoved him into a cell and locked the door. For Adam, this was not too unexpected. The authority had allowed him to avoid structure and regimentation for too long; and the time for it to end had finally arrived. He sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, unsure of what was going to happen next. The cops had not asked him any questions. An hour later, the cell door was opened and another guy was pushed in--another bad citizen. The guy looked his age, and Adam did not know him even though they must live in the same district. The afternoon came and went, then in the evening his mother came and brought him food. The other guy's sister came and brought him food too. That night the two inmates slept on the cold floor. The next morning a cop marched both of them to the central prison, a high-walled, razor-fenced complex near the city's main market. It was only a fifteen-minute walk but it felt long because on the way people looked at them curiously: they were escorted by an armed guard and their hands were cuffed like criminals.

 

That day he was put in a room with at least forty other people. The central prison was crowded as he had remembered, he had been in it once before--for something he had not done: he was accused of being an accomplice in a bicycle theft.

 

The following morning he and some others in the room were called out and ordered to board an army truck that parked in the prison's yard. There were three trucks and when they were filled with people, they rolled out. Outside the gate, families of the prisoners were waiting and they started a commotion when they saw the trucks. People surrounded the vehicles and frantically called out the names of their sons, brothers, fathers to give them food and cigarettes and provisions. His mother was in the crowd too and passed him a backpack that later he found contained some dried potatoes and packets of salt and pepper and a few changes of clothes. The trucks took to the big road leading out of the city, traveled for an hour, then turned into a bumpy dirt road and crawled for another three hours. The prisoners were not told where they were being taken to. The dirt road finally ended at the foot of the mountains and all were ordered to walk, continuing the journey. It was noon when they started to go up the mountains. They traversed slowly though dense jungles and crossed the streams under the supervision of five armed guards, one leading the way and the rest covered the column.

 

The prisoners arrived at the camp site in a jungle clearing in the late afternoon. The camp was a series of thatched bamboo barracks surrounded by a bamboo fence and there was also a watch tower. The site was empty when the prisoners arrived and Adam estimated the number of the new inmates to be about a hundred. The commander of the camp, a respectable-looking old man with silver hair, addressed the prisoners, telling them that they were undesirable elements of society and they were going to be kept here to do labor for an indefinite period of time until it was determined that they had been rehabilitated. Adam recognized many heroin addicts in the crowd. Then they were organized into teams and assigned sleeping spaces and each was issued a hatchet, a pair of anti-leeches stocking, a mosquito nest, a blanket, a steel rice bow, a pair of chopsticks, and a tin spoon. The prisoners would sleep in two rows in each barracks on two opposite long wooden boards that extended from one end of the barrack to the other. Within the compound there were also outhouses and a mess hall.

 

The next morning the guards marched the prisoners into the jungle and put them to work. They cut down shrubs, trees, grasses, tangles, vines, all, to create field for farming. They were now a chain gang, taken under the gun to the work site every morning, labored all day, then returned to the camp in the late afternoon. It was back breaking labor under the scorching sun. And there wasn't enough to eat. Everyone was hungry all the times. Most prisoners were young men, the oldest was no more than thirty, and the food ration they received three times a day was barely enough to make them felt they had eaten anything at all. Each meal consisted of two small bowls of rice, fish sauce, and a cup of vegetable soup. So at every opportunity, the prisoners would look out for things edible in the jungle to supplement their diet. Sometimes they would find a wild small animal run by and they would all throw their hatchets at it and with luck they would kill the animal and bring it back to the camp and in the evening they would roast the animal and share the meat among them themselves. And they were all hungry for sweet and fat. But the most valuable items in the camp were candies and tobacco, which were brought to the camps for some prisoners by their relatives perhaps once a month, but not all had relatives who would do that for them on a regular basis.

 

Once on the occasion of independence day, there was a celebration and the prisoners were treated to a good meal. The food ration for that day was increased, and the for the midday meal, there were boiled bacon. Everyone ate their fills and were happy. One day someone smuggled in a bottle of rice wine and let Adam have a cup. It felt wonderful to taste alcohol again, and it felt like heaven when the effects of the wine went to the head and made him happy.

 

Two months after arriving in the camp, Adam broke his glasses while working and was excused from labor. He sat in the barracks for days afterward waiting for another pair of glasses that were being sent up by his family. The team leader said Adam had deliberately broken his glasses in order to avoid duties. And for those idle days, his food ration was reduced because he was not working. During the time in the camp he was also hit with malaria. It was a terrible illness. He felt cold and despite covering himself with three blankets he still shook. As if the cold was coming from inside his bone marrow. During those cold spells and if it was night, Adam would hug his bedfellow tightly for some body heat, and the guy hugged him back too because he knew Adam was sick of malaria and needed warmth. After the cold came the hot and it made him sweat profusely and he had to take off all his clothes. The cold and hot alternated every ten or fifteen minutes. His father sent medicine when he heard Adam was sick with malaria. The illness lasted for two weeks and he felt as if he was in a dream world--because of the high fever. He returned to work after feeling well again.

 

Every night all prisoners had to attend political meetings and listen to lectures on the virtues of socialism. There were criticism and self-criticism sections; and the nightly meetings would always end with everyone singing a patriotic song together then all would go to bed at the same time. Adam was honored once for being a model prisoner and an "advanced" laborer. Many prisoners tried to escape, but most were recaptured and brought back. For punishment, they were beaten by the guards, often while the whole camp watched, as if the guards were making an example of the victim. One guy did not learn his lesson, he tried to escape twice, and after the second failed attempt, he was shot in the one of his feet, again, in plain view of all. During the monsoon, one prisoner escaped but two days later his body was found in a stream not too far from the camp. People assumed he was killed after loosing his footing and smashing his head against a rock while trying to cross the raging stream.

 

Beside the constant hunger and the hard labor, what Adam dreaded most was the leeches that were everywhere in the jungle. They were creatures tiny like match sticks and invisible under