If you don't know, now you know

The 7th annual Asian Human Resource Development conference is underway. Reed wore his Sunday best to the opening ceremony. Blue jeans, both sagging and stiff with a broken zipper. His dead fly sagged open, concealed only by an untucked but crisp white shirt. A University of Minnesota football montage tie hung in an unnatural way. A black porkpie covered Reed's silver to strawberry blond shag for most of the evening. The evidence of this glaring social misstep became obvious when the organizer of the conference asked Reed, "What is that on your head?"
I wore a white pinstriped suit with a light paisly shirt. An outsized Japanese scarf of delicate fabric served as some kind of demented ascot. I wrapped it around my necked and tucked the thing into my shirt. It looked bizarre, ridiculous, and somehow, entirely appropriate.
The spread was fine. Drinks for American prices. People warmed up to the cameras just fine. I got a couple Heinekins for me and Reed. Morgan kept the tape rolling and the intern kept the sound bouncing on the level.

This morning I made Reed borrow a pair of my pants for the conference against his loud and sustained whining. I also got a tie around his neck and had him leave the hat at home. We arrived 10 minutes early and Reed began to bloviate immediately. The group photo went fine. You'll see me and Reed in the back center. The photo will eventually be posted on this website.

The Vietnam Visas came off OK. The Embassy is a low slung compound with a tiny and ominous looking side door next to a massive gate that Never Opens. You push your way through and step over the ledge into a covered area made of tile that floods in the rain. Usually there are a couple large cockroaches flipped on their backs doing the Charleston on the far end, down by the bathroom. Sometimes the parking cops wander in there to take a piss, as it's close and nobody seems to mind too much. You push through some tinted glass doors and there's another tile waiting room. There's a lot of tile in Bangkok, maybe on account of the humidity. Don't even run to catch the skytrain after it has just rained. You'll slip on the tile and crack your neck and miss your train and probably just lie there bleeding for awhile until arrangements are made. You may even miss another train while you're lying there.

There's a couple maps of Vietnam on the walls of the embassy waiting room and a wire basket with a 2 inch stack of papers marked VISA APPLICATION. We filled one out in uppercase block lettering and gave the irritated woman behind the glass 1800 Baht and our passports and our applications.
Reed expedited his application for 2500 baht. He can't afford to be without his passport for more than a few days on account of needing thousands of bahts a day to support his various leisure inclinations. Forty years after the war, Vietnam said ok sure stop by.

Reed has stayed at the Reno before. He knows it and he likes it. Everyone knows him. Everyone knows us now too. There's the Italian guy Geo that owns the pizza place next door. He's from Milan and he looks like he could benchpress 495 with a bad hangover, and maybe he does. The pizza is good and sometimes we stop by and sit at the table outside and kill the humidity with big cold bottles of Heinekin. The manager there is also Italian and doesn't speak much english but sometimes in the morning I pass by and see him sitting in the shadows and he waves and I say hello.

Wayne is from Canada and retired down the coast a little here in Thailand. He's staying here at the Reno while his family visits. The kids swim in the pool and everyone relaxes and Wayne and Reed sit by the pool. Wayne mostly listens and smokes. Most people just listen when Reed is around. He bloviates feloniously like an indestructable broken record the devil forged in the hottest furnaces of hell to test the will of men.

There was a Vietnamese-born kid Reed met by the pool. Soon they were sitting and talking. Morgan and I got out of the pool after awhile and joined them. He was a 20 year old on holiday. He moved to Sweeden in 92 and spoke english well with a Sweedish accent. He had an outline of a tattoo of bunch of fish that covered his entire arm. I met him on the street a couple of days later and said he was on his way to get it filled in. I wished him the best of all good luck and we parted ways. At the pool, he told us his father fought in the war for the North Vietnamese. He said his father never spoke much about the war. His aunt got her shoulder shot up back in the war and they had to hack it off. Now she's only got one arm.

These are the people in Reed's neighborhood. They all know me and I know them and we say hello on the street and down at the 7-11. Sometimes we'll sit by the pool and talk things over. The world is one big neighborhood for Reed Meyer and you know where he's at; down on the block. Mr. Meyer's neighborhood runs through the sacred halls of acadamia to the twisted and depraved back alley dives. From the tundras of Minnesota to the jungles of Laos, call the crib same number same hood, it's all good.