Lately Sawatdee has been a not short-lived host of argumentative, nasty, and tiresome posts. Not necessarily 'Topics' have been that way, but the replies have often spiraled downwards into 'gotcha' territory, accomplishing nothing.
I am certainly guilty of joining in sometimes ... mostly trying to be funny, but often not succeeding and thus the spiraling carries on apace. The recent Moderator Wars are an example, but many other posts as well.
In an attempt to go elsewhere on this Forum, I regurgitated a topic I'd written on Gaybutton some years ago (2012 to be exact) which I like myself and which is copied here to try and find some good hearts in men who would rather like to cool the waters.
Don't get me wrong, I love controversial topics and hope they remain here. I just get sick of the spiralling as the last pages start to appear.
I have added a few things ~ written in Bold/Blue ~ in the post which bring it up to 2017 ... the number of years I have been tied at the hip to a wonderful partner.
This post may seem self indulgent to some, but I hope by the end of it you may have a change of heart.
There is always some considerable (and quite understandable) apprehension within ranks that any exposure of 'personal' stuff (especially images) on the internet is not the greatest of ideas. But I've never been much of a fan of this point of view: message boards are almost by definition the kind of 'media' which cries out for more than dryish analytics . . . so inclined most of us seem to be to 'understand' Thais, Thai ways, and Thai involvements.
It seems to me that ~ being thus inclined ~ it's rather half-done not to include at least parts of The Heart in our quests, rather than simply the cold observation, or the dusty theoretical.
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This is a short story ~ from the heart ~ of a Thai man growing older before my eyes, over a period of[FONT=Verdana][FONT=inherit]17 years. ('Short' because it started out 'long' ... then I changed my mind).
We don't all get the pleasure of experiencing this particular life journey over many years: the Butterflys happily flit from boy/man to boy/man (and good for them! I like butterflyism very much ... in others); the well-meaning Dreamers/Searchers search, find their loves, then, more often than not and for a whole host of reasons, lose those same loves in two or four or six (or ?) months ~ rarely more ~ of existential and roller-coaster drama and angst (try again!).
But 'flitting' charges the atmosphere with same-same, in so far as time goes by. The story progresses somewhat like this: ~ this great boy is gone by morning ~ replaced by another great boy two days later, then gone after breakfast ~ and four years on and another great Thai guy is still hopefully around this corner, on that stage, cruising that umbrella on the sand ... but for some odd reason, he never seem to age ~ much.
The exception to the Timelessness Rule are those of us, the minority, who've found a Thai man to happily bed down with for very long time frames.
Seventeen years is easily long enough for two people to wrinkle-up, grey-up together; to grow settled; to give in (on occasion); to argue enthusiastically unafraid; to shrug off the drama; to massage the other's feet; to grocery shop together.
To put some context into this story of aging, I can state: oddly enough, even I can grow old as well. As seen here:
In 1981 ~ nothing being further from my mind than Thailand ~ I hopped on a plane to Europe with my beloved 750 Suzuki and my road racing leathers and ended up high up on a cliff overlooking Douglas, Isle of Man. I'd just ridden around the Road Course ~ that's Mt. Snaefell in the background, the Course goes over it's top ~ and arrived back in Douglas with bugs between my teeth and love in my heart for this sweet little Island just off Liverpool England, and close to Ireland (and The Troubles) on the other side.
My hair was a lightish brown and by the looks of it I had some curls there which I can't quite remember having. And windy tousled as only a decent head of hair can be while standing in the full salty ocean wind above the Irish Sea.
I was 34 years old. (I have many pictures of me much younger, but they are packed away in places I can't recall ... none digitized, so this is the best I've got 'at hand'.)
But of Mr Pot's early years, I have this one, of quite a lot.
It was 1985 for him ... four years after I posed on that wind-blown Gaelic rise. Taken in Rayong, after quitting time at the Thai restaurant where he had found work and a culinary education.
Many years later ~ in 2010 I think, and when he was 41 ~ we drove through Rayong on the way to a short holiday at Kho Chang. He pulled over at this very same restaurant where he had apprenticed so many years before, and he guided me around the outdoor area (it was huge) while he related his history there to me.
An elderly rather hi-so looking Thai lady approached us ... he said hello ... her face lit up as she remembered him, after all those years in between! I was dumb founded at the odds against of such an unexpected rendezvous, but there they were, unabashedly together again, sitting, talking, holding each others hands. I walked away and looked around by myself for half an hour while they reminisced.
Suphot still to this day has a distinct contemplative side, and it shows here on his face: a quiet sense of vague melancholy is the only way I can describe it: he looks inward a lot, and seems to have been of that ilk most of his life. In the beginning I used to ask him " ... what's the matter ... ?" a lot, but he got sick of answering and eventually told me there was nothing the matter and please stop asking. Which I did.
He was 16 years old here.
But the eighties were all over (for him, and for me), as was one long love affair in Canada (10 years) and this boy headed for Thailand in year 2000 and ended up meeting the best man he'd ever met, Mr Suphot ... in Bangkok ... not in a gogo bar ... by pure serendipity.
This shot was taken then, or I should say, on a quick return trip a month later I made to check out that our first, quick and furtive roll in the hay was as dominant in his mind as it was in mine. Which it was.
That's the Chao Praya River in the background, and behind that the Grand Palace ... we were standing at Wat Arun, photographed by a gardener.
I can only think of a Mona Lisa-like smile when I see this photo: and I see it a lot as it's aged and dog-eared look is because it's been in my wallet, cropped and plasticised, for seventeen years now (yep, still there).
It's the very first photo I ever took of him, and I of course thought him unbelievably handsome.
He is 31 years old here. I was 53.
The photo below was taken in January of 2002. I arrived by plane, he met me at the airport and I was quite shocked at his appearance: ashen, gaunt, hollow-cheeked. I worried at his apparent change in the hotel that night and this worry did not go unnoticed. He told me he'd not only been very busy on the farm, but had just got over a very dangerous appendics operation (" ... I nearly die last month ... " he said), but pneumonia as well only a week later. Of course I was very upset that he had not told me about this ~ we talked by phone often ~ but he said he didn't want to worry me.
We spent the next two weeks fattening him up . . . and as you can see, it worked! The two photos below were taken on the same trip: the first a bag o' bones, the second bulked up and much happier three weeks later.
He was 33 years old in these two photos below.. I cannot remember where the first shot was taken, but the second is on Patong Beach, Phuket.
Another dog-eared photo not digitized, but later scanned. Taken in 2005, sitting on the fence on the mountain top lookout at Pattaya. Suphot is 36 years old in this shot (I was 58) and is showing ~ to me at least ~ the definite signs of a maturing face, an early middle-ager, more self-assured . . . a Thai man easy-going in his body, and mind.
We had by this date pretty well decided that This-Was-It and a life together (at some future point, I was not yet retired) seemed to be looming.
And voila, the looming ended! November of 2007 and I'd retired, we'd rented a townhouse in Hua Hin and he was happy as a lark to NOT being down on the farm for most of the year and starting to plan his new taxi/tour business.
But like most Thais, he is infinitely photogenic and can look lighter than air and graceful in the dumbest of poses. In general, farangs can hardly ever accomplish this feat.
The Mona Lisa smile has been replaced by full-tooth-on shot as his future seems to becoming more predictable and the pleasant general background hiss of the Good Life is always just below the surface . . . often bubbling up to small explosions of exuberance evidenced the the photo below. I love it when he gets like this
Suphot can frown and look decidedly older, but when that smile breaks out he magically loses five years.
He is 38 years old in this photo.
And then there's me in 2009. Getting white-haired too quickly (in my opinion) but still willing to sit for a photo of the two of us together.
The Mona Lisa is still there, bred in the bone so to speak. This photo was taken by my cousin who was visiting with his wife and we went up to Bangkok to look through the newly-built Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre. I don't mind the shot of me, but I love the gentle comfortableness of his arm draped on my shoulder . . . better than chocolate, or a hug.
I have my cousin John to thank for my favourite photo of us together, now enlarged and framed and sitting on a shelf behind the bed.
Never a 'boy' in my mind, Suphot has aged in the best of ways . . . though in 2009 there are wrinkles around the eyes that cannot be seen in the photo. They only get larger, and deeper.
He turned 40 that same year. I unfortunately didn't stop (as I expected to do) and became 62.
And now it's 2012. He's about to turn 43 and I start collecting my Old Age Pension in July, when I arrive at 65.
My best friend back in Canada reminds me of the time when I was 35 and declared that I'd off myself upon turning 40 "just because". Well, I didn't, and Suphot says ~ he's heard this story ~ that his presence 'In-The-World', unknown to me at the time, prevented me from doing that, and thus paved the way for me coming to Thailand in the first place and meeting him. Yeah right ... it's all about him.
But one can forgive such mild self-importance when one views this very latest photo of my very maturing old man. His contentedness here is obvious and compelling. Wrinkles are showing in photos now, and the difference in the face of 2000 and now 2017 is immensely warming.
He is now, in 2017, at the ripe age of 49, but still looks just about the same as in this last photo.
I am a reasonably healthy 70.
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Originally Posted by joe552
