Crosspost Password

A random chapter from my book--"Border Crossings--Tales of Transit and Transgressions in the Global Village" One of my favorites for some reason

Extended Crossings

14.  CROSSPORT  PASSWORD

I am generally a modest man, with much to be humble about. I couldn’t then get that upset with them.  Especially when they so clearly weren’t concerned at all. It’s hard to hold rigid rage when the body is a melting piece of rubber Gumby all day long. 

By the exact amount my wife claimed I should have protested more, she pestered me, for being such a popsicle.  Relation equations: they eventually add up to disintegration, or, get absorbed perpetually, each day anew, ever fraying. Maybe it was the heat, or the adventure itself.

She looked at me with intermittent disdain, reflected through the vanity mirror as she brushed out her long hair, and pushed a stern, reproachful look back up into the glass.  I returned it, challenging the icy strong angles and perfect edges of her face. A thin crease of smile lines hid about the mouth; parentheses around a conundrum.

“Well, you could have at least requested our money back.”

“I already paid them; and we did stay in the room all night.  It’s probably business as usual around here.  Kinda like asking for your money back home because the pool wasn’t heated, you know?”

 She brushed at a long silence, then:

“Well, you could stand up for yourself, and what is right more often; for what matters. You shouldn’t always be so wishy-washy and pathetic.”

It’s not that our relationship had turned bad.  It had never been that good.  It was just getting softer�"like the overripe fruit in this hot tropical sun.  She would melt her demands to an internal dialogue, and then fume whenever I failed to follow the script. Besides, she was probably right.

 I hadn’t felt particularly timid or shy however, when I marched up to the reception office before the first light of day.  I was still sincerely pissed off.  In fact, I think my heart was still pounding in shock. That we had actually paid more for this particular hotel room, so that accommodations would be more agreeable, made it that much worse.

But when I loudly protested indignantly that I had been bitten, not once, but twice!, by a rat!, in my bed, while I was sleeping; they acted more surprised that I was upset, than by the described incident itself.  I was already slowly becoming used to the Southeast Asian pervasive equanimity and smiling, passive tolerance for everything.  Yet, I still expected some sort of sympathetic outrage.  As I expounded on how I actually was awakened on the final incident by feeling little pointy feet scamper all the way up my arm, before having sharp teeth sink into my chin, they nodded knowingly, as if they fully understood the feeling.  (I neglected to mention the fact that it also fortunately saved me from a nightmare where my wife had somehow become my high school math teacher). My strongly expressed dismay however, seemed totally incomprehensible to them.  

As I absorbed my wife’s mirror reflected scorn, I realized I should actually be happy it hadn’t happened to her. I just made a mental note that I’d better act more forcefully upon our next slight or perceived insult, if I wasn’t to fall too far behind in the conjugal score keeping.  

Overall, it was hard to tell who had the home field advantage over here. She didn’t necessarily relish the arduous traveling like I did. I don’t think she even particularly enjoyed my company for long periods in such close quarters either. It was more that she just liked to know where I was, and what I was up to at any given time.  She was the one especially excited and enthused about researching and developing and starting our own import business. Perpetually bottled up together and heated so, affiliations tended to dissolve.

She liked having traveled to exotic places; she just didn’t particularly like actually traveling there.

Successfully combining business, travel, and pleasure, we were making valuable contacts throughout Thailand.  We had slowed down somewhat though in Malaysia.  That was the problem. As business partners we clicked.  Whenever we tried to relax however, the bazookas came out. We both heavily imploded around our normal, easy reliance on persistent partial attention. Instead, here we huddled, always close together in alien hotels, markets, buses and trains.  Savored little individual retreats had previously been the valued walls carefully built around our own personal habits.

  

Teasing her hair within the room’s tension, she finally relinquished to the mirror its admiration. She continued brushing out her long blond hair though, slowly, over and over. Did it get longer as she brushed, or did the room just expand within her meditation?

 

 I rubbed my raw chin and felt diminished, on top of being bitten. I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag to find some center.

“Do you have to always smoke so?  It’s gross! Especially those Thai Marlboros you’ve adopted over here.”

I put it out in the ashtray.

She believed in marriage as if it were a career choice. It was just all the suffering and sacrifice it entailed that she rejected.  Ultimately good business partners and occasional lovers were we, but friends�"not at all. We would have never been friends, under any circumstances.  Instead, we clutched firmly at some delinquent stability here in the business of a traveling marriage.

“And quit pacing up and down. It makes me nervous,”

“I’m not pacing.”

“Yes you are!…..Why don’t we head straight for Kuala Lumpur, and get on the next plane to Singapore.  You said yourself, it was a sophisticated, first-world type capitol.  We could take advantage of some modern amenities, kick back, and just forget about traveling for a while.”

I hesitated briefly; “It would cost a bit more; but yeah,…maybe you’re right.”

“We could even maybe find an air conditioned hotel for a change.”

The next few days only proved again how right she was. As we traveled overland from northern Malaysia, to Kuala Lumpur, to take a short flight on to Singapore, it felt like all that existed was heat and sweat. The melting torrid heat of Southeast Asia was a lamb’s wool, humid heat.  The afternoon sun was an ancient, ashen magma, as the temperature of the air outside equaled that inside the body. Divisions between things slowly began to break down and flow into one dreamlike pool of lethargy.

The sky hung low with a thick haze from eye-watering, rice-field burning smoke and dust.  The searing heat seemed to settle just a few feet off the torrid ground.  Even the raucous street noises sagged, and weakened on the languid wind.  Sweat pouring pores cleansed themselves;  only to dry and cake again after each minor physical movement.  What little makeup she used dissolved around anxious eyes and hot, thirsty lips.

As I relished the exotic, home sick she grew as we entered further into the foreign. No matter where one is traveling, there is usually this subtle, yet zealous desire to fit in�"to look like a local.  Whether it’s the clothing chosen, the food eaten, the activities pursued, or just learning a few phrases of dialect so you can ask: “How much is that sandwich?”, before you’re completely bamboozled by the response.

Traveling in Southeast Asia for us, this was next to impossible.  Handling all the impossible languages was perhaps only second to how foreign we both looked.   Where I nowhere near fit in, my wife was like a walking billboard--  Straw-blond, blue eyed, light skinned; people would stare at the both of us in the streets and markets as if we had dropped down from outer space.  People would literally stop whatever they were doing, turn their heads, and mouth open, just stare.  Little kids would rush at us from a distance and ask to press the skin on her upturned palms, to watch the blood-color rush from white, and back to red, and then laugh and giggle, pressing their own brown hands in contrast. Without ever really sympathizing with her burdens, I sensed maybe a modern, air-conditioned Singapore might be a needed brief respite, and maybe even a rare opportunity for some intimacy.

We flew on to Singapore hopeful for renewal.  And, as weary and ready for a ‘first world’ experience again for a while, nothing could have prepared us for the antiseptic world we flew into.

. 

Prosperous and multicultural, the delicious street food that we had gotten so accustomed to no longer existed.  Instead, lifeless dishes were served upon sterile counters of chrome and plastic by numbed, docile servants. No street life or squalid drama here; only well trained, well heeled citizenry, marching in step to a vision of the future followed dutifully. 

Tiny, frightened but proud, McDonald’s kiosks huddled beneath behemoth shopping malls. Rampant development was everywhere. Hordes of scurrying, omnivorous shoppers were right at home with the savage progress. Automated check out machines in the gleaming supermarkets not only scanned your purchases, but spoke out, in perfect English, the price of each item as it passed.

The few drooping elderly buildings from a forgotten era were gloriously supported in their decay by psychic Dali crutches, dreaming of museum money. Relics of the past were all fenced off, forgotten, and forbidden, ready for eminent urban renewal.  A city without apparent culture, history, or soul; but numerous mosques, fountains, and flowers; hotels, breweries, and sleek bridges lined the wide boulevards. Plastic, immaculate, imitation Oriental architecture; sky scrappers of steel and glass, the city glowed, effervescent in the night, with tattooed fingers of light reaching high up into the clear night sky. Like a spinning spaceship of the future, a shining, teardrop diadem suspended form the very lower tip of the Asian continent.

Order and tidiness everywhere; everything was clean, clean.  Tried as I might, I couldn’t find a single random candy wrapper in the streets, let alone used bit of gum anywhere.  You could literally eat off most of the sidewalks, if you so chose. The traffic behaved as well as the pedestrians.  With even few navigational challenges in the well marked, spotless streets, we soon tired of our new town, and retired to enjoy our expensive, air cooled hotel room.

But with a little easy time suddenly on our hands, our retreat into our separate spaces of partial attention frayed again, and ended when I finished the book I was reading.

Closed, and placed on the headboard, my free hand wandered randomly to the hip lying next to me. As it smoothed my fingertips, my freed mind momentarily held the pleasing image of her standing naked in front of me.

“Don’t!...”

“Don’t what?;” feigning innocence from me. I withdrew my hand.

“You know….”

She generally squashed my prayers of desire with well thought out reasons why I should get in closer touch with my inner eunuch.  I should be more mature, and considerate.   I would then fantasize that we had met for the first time over here while traveling�"so we could actually first be just friends for a while.  But instead, our relationship was all about sex and possessiveness.  She possessed a husband, albeit a traveling, adventure addicted one, and I possessed a beautiful partner. Was her exceptional physical beauty all that ever really attracted me to her?  Why did we travel so…? Why was sex so rarely forthcoming? We had rarely dared to directly broach these questions, while balanced so precariously on the road. 

“Jeezus, Jennifer, what’s with you? You’re spaced out and distant all day in the city, you hardly ever seem to listen to anything I’m saying, and in bed, you’ll have nothing to do with me.  Is it me? Are you sick of me; or just tired of traveling; or what?.....”

“No, no. I’m sorry; I don’t know, I just feel a little, …a little different, that’s all.”  She backed away almost into tenderness, startled by my unusual confrontational tone.

A long silence suspended in the air between us like a wandering balloon, ready to burst at any moment.

We hated each other; we loved each other.  Rainbow webbed to my addictions�"she knew too well how I needed her perfect sexual beauty. She also knew that denial was the best way to control it, and spin it tighter.

Felling rejected, and suddenly justified enough to carp on if I wanted to; instead, I softly and gently began to slowly rub her thighs beneath the covers. She moved not a muscle at first, and prematurely calculating success, I moved my caresses northward.  She almost jerked her body away, toward the other side of the bed.

This brought on my own knee jerk response, as I bolted, naked, out of the bed, and stood pouting by the window. 

“I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood.” At the other side of the room, tenderness was much easier.

“Well it just seems like you’re never in the mood lately. We’ve been relaxing like you wanted, and we’ve even got this nice cool room….”

She looked pleadingly for sympathy, “Yeah, but it’s different for a woman. You just don’t understand.  It has to feel right. Meanwhile I have to take these pills, which messes with my sex drive. I’m the only one ever responsible for birth control, you know, which also affects how I feel.  Then I have to be ready whenever you are; it makes me feel manipulated, and controlled.”

“Controlled!?  You get to decide when, frequency, even position and speed. I always just have to wait and see. I’m the one completely controlled in this situation.” I turned away and gazed drearily out the window. In the streets below, a traffic cop motioned frantically at a busy intersection, artistically manipulating complex traffic flows like an accomplished dancer. I watched him through jealous, yellow-tinted window.

Once we had settled into a debate, I knew I had lost. I’d have to just white knuckle it through this storm, like all the others

 “Ahh, that’s OK. We gotta get up before dawn to catch our flight anyway. We probably barely have enough time to get a snack and try and get some sleep first. Then it’ll be more travel then again though for a while.” 

Sleep encrusted eyes; my alarm was a jet plane at 3:30am. Out in the dark street, I hailed a taxi as my wife was still stuffing clothing in her suitcase. Off to the airport, I was even starting to feel positive and excited about moving on, traveling to Indonesia, new distractions again. 

 It wasn’t not that our driver looked sleepier than we felt. It wasn’t that he had several dead, stuffed lizards dangling from his rear view mirror, (well, it should have been that, being as in Singapore that’s some serious unnecessary detritus). It wasn’t even that he was literally flying down the early morning, empty freeway, pushing the sound barrier.  It was the cell phone call he took while driving, and then, the quick, scornful scowl he flashed back at us in the mirror several times while he was talking.

Still driving, he turned to us while slowing off to the side of the highway at the airport entrance, and in perfect Singlish said:

“You not leave Singapore! You not pay hotel! Drinky too much Coca-cola.”

“What’s he saying?"  To the driver, from me; “I don’t understand. ‘Coca-cola’…?”

Interpreting my questioning as resistance, he became a human Swiss army knife.  He  put his caller on hold, and motioned the entire approaching Singapore military forces forward with machetes and machine guns drawn, while waving the circling helicopters with his other hand, and then began yelling in an ever higher pitched, knife-edged voice back at us:

“You drinky Coca-cola; not pay! You now pay, or not leave Singapore….”

“I have no idea what he’s talking about. Did you drink his Coca-cola or something?”

Her expression suddenly turned from indignant confusion, to sheepish wonder.  “I opened a can of Fanta Orange that was in our refrigerator, and took a few sips while you were out getting the cab. I was thirsty. Is that what he means?  How would he even know about that?”

“Do you mean a can of Coke from the hotel refrigerator?....”

“Yes, yes. You pay all, right now!”

He  put the back doors on automatic lock. From the bushes by the highway, judges in black robes, whacking sticks in hand, approached, ready for the word. The whole Singapore Army aimed their artillery at the cab, as the driver sternly waited.

“OK, OK. Let me see…” Digging in my pockets, “How much is owed?”

“Two dollar.”

“Here;” fumbling through all my change, “OK, now?”

“OK.”

Silence.

Then, whispers from the back seat; “That was weird! How’d they know what cab we were in; they didn’t even see us leave?  And I put the half-fullFanta back in the fridge.”

As we pulled up to the Garuda Airline counter, we had seen the future. The third world again looked like abig improvement.  Until……….

Still dozing in our seats half way to our destination of the island of Bali, we were shaken from would be slumber by the plane’s intercom:

Crackle…“This is the captain…. We’ve got a problem here………crackle.”

Then, nothing.

Now I don’t know about you, but when the plane’s captain comes on the intercom, not one of the stewards, but the captain, I generally listen.  When he comes on suddenly to tell us there’s a ‘problem’, and says nothing further, I’m going to start getting alarmed.

After about a 10 minute pause with anxiety levels rising, he returned to explain some type of hydraulic equipment was malfunctioning.  'There was no reason to worry', but we would be landing soon in Jakarta, instead of going all the way on to Bali, as scheduled.

Landing in Jakarta, we soon also learned that the plane would not be available until the following morning, and that Garuda Airlines would be putting us up in a hotel in downtown Jakarta for the night. I thought this sounded interesting enough, until we all started lining up to give our names, AND PASSPORTS, to the customs officer for keeping over night.

Having been in several situations in foreign countries where possession of my American passport was the only thing that literally saved my life, I became very uneasy with this idea as we shuffled forward in line. 

More to screw up my own resolve, I waxed serious and pedantic to my wife:

“You know, one should NEVER relinquish one’s passport for ANY reason?  It’s your only security overseas. You never know what might happen, and if you don’t have one……….well.  250 years ago, people had to have their passport actually signed by the Prime Minister to be valid.”

“I hope you’re not planning on waiting for that.” Then she  turned and gladly gave up her name and passport to the man at the window.

Some people travel in part to free themselves from strictly held mores, expectations, and civil responsibilities�"to let their hair down as it were. I’m just the opposite�"only the very best and polite behavior in all things.  A ‘chameleon-wimp’, as my wife might say.  But I have no interest in spreading any ‘ugly American’ stereotypes.  I mean, I gladly paid our ‘Fanta tax’--rat bites to the face in the middle of the night--hey, no problem; I flow with it, man.  But threaten my potential freedom in any way, and then I’ve got a problem.

So, when it was my turn, I told the man that I didn’t want to give him my passport.  He looked me up and down, and said to go over and explain that to the officer sitting alone, off in a side office. Approaching, I noticed that officer looked stern, had a uniform, and a big gun at his side.

My mind is an incessant nuisance of a telemarketer�"always yabbering away at justifications for my own unique existence, and trying to convince myself why my way must be infinitely more superior to anyone else’s. Or, I may actually find myself having heated arguments with myself in times of stress.  Sometimes, I even lose those arguments.  At that instant, my mind was working overtime fielding urgent in-calls:…. ‘I’m the only one in the whole plane making this fuss.’ ‘What if he wants to arrest me?’ “No, they would never arrest you.’ ‘Maybe I should just shut up, and go along with everyone else.’ ‘Everyone must be looking at me’ ‘What must they think I’m doing?……’

But I was resolute.  I didn’t care. I walked up confidently to his desk. I explained myself.

He looked up blandly without blinking; “You don’t want to give up your passport?.....”

“Yeah, well, no…not really.”

“Then don’t.” He looked back down at his paperwork.

Mentally noting the name on his badge for security, I walked proudly back to the group, and arrogantly flashed my passport to my wife. 

 “See; you just gotta stand up for what’s right, and not be ‘wishy-washy’; right….?”

Fishing finally for a compliment I came up with a boot. Draining it, I put it on, and unfortunately, the shoe fit.

Kicking me back with my compliment boot, dully; “Right.”  Scowling off to no one, she was not impressed.

But, momentarily feeling smug and secure in my new boot, I joined all the other pliant lemmings into the waiting bus. It took us all to a tall, downtown hotel in the middle of the sprawling, frenetic Indonesian capitol. Waiting in line again to be assigned a room, after all the names were called, we were still waiting. 

Approaching the desk as they were busy closing their books, we insisted we too were on the plane. They had my wife’s name, of course,  but not mine. They said all the rooms were full. Showing my ticket, they checked some paperwork, and finally gave us a key to ‘a small room in the basement’, instead of an air-conditioned suite, like everyone else. 

“Well, Mr. ‘Stand Up For What’s Right’, I hope your passport keeps us nice and cool tonight…………”  

It didn’t.  But it did help me save the first two seats in the bus the next morning, because I didn’t have to wait in line again to get it back. And the cool we missed out on the previous night in the hotel chilled plenty-forth from my wife, right through the sweltering Jakarta streets, all the way to the airplane.

In the air once again, trying to feel buoyed by the adventure and novelty of our newest destination, my carefully efficient wife soon uncovered my next blunder. After the stewardess passed around the perfunctory customs declaration form, she pointed out, in the fine print at the bottom that: “One must have a passport valid at least 2 months from the exit date from Indonesia, in order be admitted into the country.”

“Didn’t you say that your passport expires only a couple weeks after we get back to the states?”

“Uh-oh, yeah, I think it does. Let me see. Oh no! It expires in exactly one month. So what does that mean?”

“Oh, great! Now, thanks to you, we’ll probably have to return home and won’t even be able to enter Indonesia, where  we're mainly trying to set up our business. Wonderful! And our return flight isn’t for another three weeks”

“Well, then at least you’ll finally be happy. Jeez. What do we do?” 

“I don’t know. What are you going to do? You’re supposed to be the expert traveler and all. How could you overlook something like this? God; I can’t believe I trust you, and let myself get into situations like this, cause of you. It sure is good that you guarded your precious little invalid passport in Jakarta, or we might never have gotten this far.”

Our marriage on wheels and wings was skidding. All flaws and imperfections microscopically clear long ago, I still sought good grades each day anew.  At the same time that I could let my guard down with her, be human and fallible, I also ever so wanted to impress her with my brilliance, more than anyone else. Competitive rivalry and buried resentment all wrapped up together in our mutual dependence. So with every obvious blunder, I suffered twice.

A cute redhead seated behind our squabbles smiled broadly at me as I got up to relieve some tension, and went aft to the restroom. I raised her one, and smiled back with a wink. I suddenly felt better. I used secret flirtations like this anytime, to make me feel valuable, still desirable, and wanted.

My wife’s obsession was our mutual fidelity. Meanwhile, I’d use torrid memories of old girlfriends, and potential fantasies of strange women to get me through the difficult times like these. It was some kind of mental therapy, replacement sex, for feelings of unacceptability. We used our vague concepts of love to smooth over and make up for our own personal imperfections and failures. But love frayed as the imperfections mounted.

We didn’t speak the rest of the flight. She had won clear advantage, and calmly rested her case. 

Sure enough, when we landed in Bali, the immigration officer immediately spotted the problem with my soon expired passport. He took me out of line, and told me to report to the special officer on the other side of the hall. I entered his office most cautiously, carrying all my things.

Shouldering sincere feelings of guilt and stupidity, as if to thereby help mollify some responsibility for the problem, I approached the man behind the desk.  He looked up very cordially and motioned for me to sit down. He even smiled as he asked to see my passport. Did this mean that things weren’t so bad? Or, was it just the Southeast Asian smiley faced way of approaching any heinous crime? 

He reviewed the problem with my passport again, without the emotion that  my wife had previously added. A small, dark man with wild hair for such an official, he was just as respectful and friendly as all Indonesians. Every minute or so he would clap his hands randomly in front of his face. Sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, such that I couldn’t tell if he was swatting at some invisible bugs, or he was very impressed and pleased with whatever I was doing or saying.  

 “I do not  think we can accept this. (Clap).  It’s very kindly of you to return to our country again, Nick. We, for our part, are very glad to have you here. (Clap). But we all must obey the laws now; yes? Don’t you agree? Yes; well, I thought so. But this is a very serious problem we have now.” (Clap)

“I’m really very sorry. I guess I just assumed that if my passport was valid still in America, then it would be here too.”

Nervous, and noticing an ashtray on his desk, I had to ask: “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No, not at all. Here. Ohhh, I see you like the same cigarette brands as me, Nick. Very good, very good. Do you have one for me too?’

“Thank you, Nick. My name is Katut. We very much want to solve this problem together, yes? Yes, I think we can together.” (Clap)

And sitting there sharing a cigarette with Katut as he applauded, on the wrong side of the immigration office, I realized that I actually began feeling more at ease than I had in days.

“I’m thinking of a secret password,  perhaps that can help us resolve this issue.  Do you know what word I’m thinking of, Nick?....”

 I immediately thought of the word: ‘bribery’, but somehow I didn’t think that was the word he was seeking.

“I don’t know�"Ummm, ‘Money’?”

“Oh no; no Nick. I’m thinking of a much better word. To help us to solution between just us.” (Loud clap)  I’m thinking of the word ‘friends’, Nick. As friends, this is very small problem we can settle most easily, between friends. Do not you agree?”

“Oh; friends.   I see.  Yes.  And how much, ahh; how difficult would it be for us to become friends?”

“Oh, very easy. In Bali we make friends very, very easily.

“So how easy is it to become friends?”

“Oh, very easy.” He leaned back in his chair, took a long slow drag from his cigarette; looked longingly at it, then at me. 

“Just for example, Nick�"we both like same kind Thai cigarettes. Maybe as good friend, you might present me couple cartons of cigarettes. That’s all. We friends then. Problem with passport, go away. What do you say, Nick?” (Clap)

Calculating in Rupias, --a few thousand, I folded the approximate amount of bills into my hand, shook his, and left the station, passport stamped. I turned and waved goodbye to Katut, my newest Indonesian friend.

And expired passport and all, I ultimately remained in Bali long after my wife returned home.  Renting a small cottage in the rice fields, my newest Balinese ‘friends’ and I relaxed in the evenings together after sunset, watching the field rats scurry beneath the emerald strobe of flitting fires flies.

Author's Note

entertaining?

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