Nonsung and/or Nonluck. A tale of two names.

I saw a bus hit a man the other day. No one found it very interesting. I saw nothing. I saw through the bus and the man and the sub human mutterings peeling away from his face. I saw a kid with no face eat an ice cream out of a polystyrene box. I saw the king everywhere.

The other day a street shut down for thirty minutes so a royal motorcade could pass unmolested. Police, police, armored luxury cars, police. Two days later I saw an ambulance in heavy traffic. It wailed its shrill song of urgency and assistance, but the sea did not part for it. Whoever was inside that ambulance, in all that heat, I imagine that their intestines just exploded. The blood filling everything, covering everything.

But I haven't even begun to tell you about Nonsung. Or Nonluck. I don’t know his name, because he could change it. He had that kind of power.

I met Nonsung outside the Lamborghini dealership on the second floor of the Siam Paragon. Siam Paragon is a very upmarket shopping mall that boasts doormen in crisp pseudo-military uniforms and saintly white gloves. With a sharp salute, the doormen open the door for you with all the regality, grace and exactitude of some sort of SS angel.

Welcome. Lamborghini dealership second floor.

I met Nonsung as I was trying to take a photo I should not have been taking. I was approached by a man.The man asked me to not take any photos, smiling. The man had an unconvincing moustache that hovered above the lacerating grin of a child. He radiated an intense calm. Not a natural calm, but one bourn from force, discipline, negation. This man was tarred and feathered in calm.

     

     "Do you want to purchase a Lamborghini today?"

     "Yes," I said.

     "My name is Nonsung. I sell Lamborghinis. Call me Nonluck, or Nonsung."

Nonsung's phone began to ring. 

     "Please take a photo," said Nonsung. Nonsung sat down, removed one shoe and began to answer his phone. "Take a good photo. Take a few."

Don't take this photo, unless Nonsung says so.

Nonsung, the Lamborghini vendor. 

Nonsung massaged his foot and spoke in fast, animated Thai about something very important. I couldn't work out what he was saying. Maybe he was on the phone to the Lamborghini factory. He spoke so fast that it was hard for me to make out what he was saying. Also, the dialect was Northern. Something about 'me' and 'you' and 'more' and 'Krispy Kreme'.  Nonsung was on the phone to the Lamborghini factory for a long time.

I was fearful that when Nonsung got off the phone he would start talking about assurance of funds, legalities, payment plans, signing things in triplicate. I didn't want that to happen. I didn't want that to happen to me.

Nonsung finished his call, abruptly. Walking towards me, he pointed at my belt.

     "You go to Chulalongkorn?"

     "Yes," I said. The word 'yes' seemed the only answer to any question.I had some periphery valium issues.

     "Don't worry about speed bumps. At Chula, they lower the speed bumps for the new Lotus. It's all OK."

It was all OK.

     "Payment is not a problem. You don't worry," said Nonsung. 

He pointed at a cardboard cutout of a suave Thai man leaning on a Siam Central Bank Visa Platinum Card.

A cardboard cutout of a suave Thai man leaning on a Siam Central Bank Visa Platinum Card.

"That man will get you the money," Nonsung said, tapping my shoulder and pointing even more furiously. 

Lies, random and merciful. Who are you, who the hell are you to turn gold back into straw?

Not long after we were in the food hall, sitting amongst the office workers and students and wealthy Saudi families arguing over Pepsi collectable cups. Large skin whitening advertisements met our every glance. Nonsang ate two Filet-o-Fish burger meals, at his request. It was my treat. If a man can afford a Lamborghini, he can afford to buy the Lamborghini dealer lunch. Quid pro quo.

Between ample fries, Nonsung told me miraculous tales, stories that I never thought would ever find me.
     "My brother stabbed a man. The man was sitting on his motorbike. Stabbed him in tong." 
     "Stomach?"
     "Stomach, yes."
     "Did the man die?"
     "My brother took his finger. Cut it off, like Angulimal," he said, wiggling all of his fingers. "The police took all of my brother to prison. Ha!"
     "Why did he stab the guy?"
     "Do you have 7-11s in Canada?"


Angulimal - from what I could piece together from what Nonsung said - was a psychopathic serial killer who had vowed to collect 1000 fingers off of his murdered victims. He wore them like a garland around his neck. A bit like Dolph Lungren in Universal Soldier, but not much. Angulimal got up to 999 and waited in the dark forest for someone to walk past. The Lord Buddha walked up. Angulimal told the Buddha he was nuts. Lord Buddha told him to kill him, it didn't matter anyway, you might as well collect your 1000 fingers. Angulimal knew then he was really nuts. Terrified by how nuts Buddha was, he knelt down before him and went on to become a monk, even a bodhisattva, a Buddha.

This is Angulimal and the Buddha

Although this depiction is not without its merits.       

I didn't think it could, but the conversation got even better.
      "You know Si Quey? See Uay Sae Ung?," asked Nonsung.
I did. I visited with him the other day. Si Quey was a cannibalistic serial killer in Bangkok in the 1950s who killed and ate the heart and liver of either 6 or 130 children, depending on who you ask. The gentlemen in question thought this act would make him stronger, immortal even. Si Quey was captured, executed by the state, mummified and put on display at Siriraj Hospital's Forensic Museum. The Thai state put him on display as a deterrent against violent crime.

Si Quey, in a phone booth.

     "Si Quey only got 130. Not enough," said Nonsung, tossing aside a napkin. "At 999, the buddha, Lord Buddha would have come. The police killed him. Wrong. Too soon, too soon. He would have become a Buddha. Si Quey and Angulimal the same. There are lots of children, but we need more bodhisattva, more Buddha. Si Quey needed to kill 870 - no 869 - more for Buddha to come."

     There was a gentle pause in the conversation. An oasis of sorts. Lying and wishing, the two of us sat at our plastic table. The afternoon tourists milled about, all swollen with money.
     "Do you like selling Lamborghinis, Nonsung?"

     "I am an enthusiast. I have all four key rings," he said.

I never asked Nonsung if he was really a Lamborghini salesman. It is not important that his main source of income was selling empty, unused Krispy Kreme boxes to street vendors to fill with their own donuts, at double the usual cost. His cousin was the man on the inside who suppled the boxes. Nonsung did not know the number for the Lamborghini factory. He suggested Google.

A real box. I think.

Before he disappeared, Nonsung took me outside and reminded me where to get my money for the Lamborghini.

A cardboard cutout of a suave Thai man leaning on a Siam Central Bank Visa Platinum Card, with lady friend. Nonsung made a sort of  'business as usual' shrug when he saw the cardboard cutout of a suave Thai man leaning on a Siam Central Bank Visa Platinum Card with a Hi-So Lady.

Nonsung's parting words?
     "Ramkhamheng the Great invented the Thai language in 1283."
I asked about how such a feat was possible, about this magic man and his instantaneous language. I did not mention Esperanto.
    "This is a completely true fact. Finished," said Nonsung. "This is true. There can be no lies. Goodbye."


And then he was gone.

I developed a perverse fascination with Nonsong. His speech was soft, never didactic. Whole parts of him seemed missing. It was as if he had been sidelined from the whole race, his pock-marked face softened by its irrelevancy. Kindly and delirious, he spoke of selling Lamborghinis and Si Quey and Siamese kings who had invented a whole language in one day as people always spoke of things that were absent: fondly, without clarification.


I hope to see him again. I think he is my friend. I wonder if he would like to go to a Michael Bolton concert in Bangkok on the 31st of October.

You have to understand that I thoroughly enjoy the banter of the hopeless, the outrageous claims they make with the white slits of their mouths. You can just go out and find us anywhere, literally anywhere.