T A B L E_T A L K What is it about Paris that makes is so je ne sais quoi? Theorize and romanticize in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y I got it online, part 2 By Jenn Shreve Comparing the pros and cons of four Internet travel services (02/02/98) I got it online, part 1 By Jenn Shreve There really are advantages to making your travel plans on the Web (01/30/98) America, grow up! By David Downie The French and Italians decry the Clinton brouhaha (01/29/98) Passages By Ralph McCarthy Four views of the expat's life in Japan (01/28/98) Paradise found By Tracy Johnston An unspoiled oasis in the Egyptian desert (01/27/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Road warrior archives		Fear, drugs and soccer in Asia +| page 2 of 3 I sat on the pitch, near a white-painted wooden fence, slipping on a pair of Diadora turf shoes while nearby a dozen or so Nepalese and Englishmen kicked around soccer balls, jumped up and down in place and swung their arms in wild forward and backward gyres. While I stretched, bending so that my nose touched my knee, I took a moment and bowed my head. I often prayed before I took the pitch, especially an unfamiliar field. I don't know who I was praying to, or why, but I asked that I be allowed to play honestly and to play simply and within myself. That I be patient and let the game come to me. Then we played. The game enabled me to forget that I was stuck in Kathmandu, that I was waiting for some THC-saturated ex-stock brokers and nightclub owners and models who were a week overdue, and that the article I had been sent to write was showing signs of miscarrying. But there were greater issues I played to escape: It is hard work staying sober in a strange town, especially when you have nothing to do but wait for a gang of well-heeled wastrels to blow in from whatever stretch of Asian sand they have laid up on. I fumed as I imagined the clique of Brits and Americans whom I had foolishly let out of my sight, sprawled in some sumptuous bungalow on some pristine Southeast Asian beach while I waited in smoggy, dusty Tamil. The game took me away from my petty worries and my needing a drink, from the temptations of a little legal or illegal sedation to help get through the languorous waiting in a town full of inebriated expats. I could forget even that I was in Kathmandu; instead I was transported to what I called Soccer Land, some magical country whose boundaries are two goals and whatever one is using as touchlines but whose domain is infinitely vast and encompassing. I had no thoughts outside the game, no wants, no desires. The earthly realm fell away. The surrounding scenery of blooming poplars and sagging bhoddi trees, the sacred cows that wandered alongside the pitch, the motorcycles and tuk-tuks that rattled past on the narrow road, even the foul smog that we breathed receded into distant, barely perceptible blips on some ignored radar screen. My wants and desires were forgotten. The lures of liquor and drugs, the cravings of the flesh, all vanished. But after 45 minutes on the pitch, I felt my concentration begin to break; I stumbled and gasped, taking deep breaths, losing my easy stride. My errant passes went to the other team, my attempts to carry the ball proved feckless. It was as if I was in one of those dreams where you flee an unknowable evil, yet no matter how hard you try, you find your legs and feet cannot generate any speed. At the same time, I noticed a player who I had not seen earlier in the game when we were dividing up our sides. A swarthy man of medium build, he must have come on after the game had started. I could not tell his age or his nationality. Because he was tirelessly in motion, it was hard to catch a clear glimpse of his face, but he had a ruddy complexion and deeply set, black eyes obscured by a shadowy, protruding forehead. He wore an acrylic, black jersey, colors of a soccer club whose name was written in an alphabet the characters of which I did not recognize. His most noticeable trait was the almost metallic, silver sheen of his hair. It was not the mottled gray hair of an aging man; it was as if this fellow had had his hair surgically replaced by thick, silver filaments. There was something disconcertingly familiar about the metallic-haired player, like the grown-up version of someone I had known in the first grade, or, more perplexing, like a vaguely recollected character from a dimly recalled dream, that vestigial, phosphene image that stayed with me for a few moments, burned into my eyelids, before I was fully awake. He played with ruthless efficiency, a fluid, consistent, creative athlete who made all those who played with him seem better. And he was a physical defender who humiliated me several times, inflicting pain when he slide-tackled me, stripping the ball from me cleanly without committing a foul. On those few occasions when I dared challenge him, he would rake the ball from my feet with such strength that I would feel a shiv of pain run up my leg. The other players did not pay particular attention to him. It was obvious to me, however, that he had transformed the character of the game from a friendly afternoon match to a steely, macho test of wills. Even the orange globe of sun had vanished behind thick, black clouds of smog, causing the sky to darken and the late afternoon city to seem more somber. The air now tasted acrid, and each breath of internal combustion effluvium was unspeakably rancid. I played until this new fellow tackled me near my own goal, pulling the ball back and scoring with a neatly healed shot while I lay crumpled on the pitch, my nose pressed down into a clod of dried horse manure. As I lay there, all my anxieties and fears returned. What if those hip, swinging travelers never showed up here in Nepal? What if I was laid up here waiting for months, running up an expense tab that would alienate me from Condé Nast forever? And, more importantly, what if in the boredom and dissolution of Kathmandu nights I decided I could have just one drink, just a few 10-milligram Valiums? I tried to shake off that thought as I brushed the manure from my nose. The fear had returned. The game ended. As I slipped off my turf shoes and peeled away a layer of sweaty socks, I looked around for the metallic-haired player but he had already gone; he must have jumped the white-painted fence immediately after the game and hailed one of the little white Daewoo taxis. I asked some of the other players who he was, what country he came from, but they shook their heads; they had not noticed him. Bangkok 1996 The Bangkok game was different. This regular game of embassy employees and long-term expats took place in Lumpini Park three times a week. Most of the players involved, particularly the half-dozen Thai players, had serious skills. I looked forward to the Lumpini game whenever I was in Bangkok. Although I was one of the worst players on the pitch, it was always exhilarating to be part of some first-class soccer. As I climbed from the taxi on Rama IV, I felt the damp air waft over me and the immediate beginnings of sweat beads along my eyebrows and upper lip. My cleats were slung by their laces over my shoulder. Last night when I arrived from Kathmandu, there had been a hint of a breeze that made its way up the Chao Praya River, but by day the heat settled over the city like some collective bad memory. Everywhere I went in Asia, I was choked by exhaust, forever wiping soot particles from my eyes. I had left Kathmandu upon receipt of a telegram, of all things, from my gang of wandering, trendy, Asian travelers who had finally made it back to Bangkok and were planning a short stay. They were capriciously peripatetic, these well-heeled, international ravers, but I had also begun to think of them as a bunch of smug, self-centered, ecstasy-swallowing morons. I had arranged to meet two of the fellows, Englishmen named Trev and Derrek, at the McDonald's near the Robinson's department store at the southwest corner of the Park. Trev had been modeling in Tokyo -- and Milan and New York -- while Derrek was a DJ who seemed to be involved with the rock group Oasis in some capacity. As they had kept me waiting for over a week in Kathmandu, I was surprised to discover they were here early, seated at a plastic table near the door, drinking Diet Cokes and picking at an order of french fries. Both boys were fair-haired, with cleft-chins and absurdly high cheekbones. That Trev was a model and not Derrek must have been the result of some arbitrary selection process a long time ago in London. They were equally handsome, and in very similar manners: feminine eyes and noses, soft pink mouths, manly, jutting chins and slender builds. Wearing expensive-looking track suits, Adidas running shoes and the bored expressions of spoiled lads who almost always got their own way with whatever they applied themselves to, they merely shrugged when I greeted them. They slipped on their Oakley shades and shuffled to their feet. N E X T+P A G E+| Pretty boys play ball