#surat thani | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hannahssimblr · 14 days ago

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Hours gone and hours to go, staring out the window at vague green mountains, rainforest, a bleeding scene behind wet glass as the rains go on, drenching the southern arm of Thailand. The train rumbles and the beds in our sleeper cabin squeak. I’ve slept already, for an hour, maybe two with a t-shirt over my face to block the light, while Jonas, pale and silent across from me stares blankly out the window picking at his fingernails, blood vessels burst in his eyes from being sick. Forty minutes in the train bathroom while a queue formed outside, and he’s too hungover to be embarrassed.

The train to Surat Thani was his idea, and seemed like a great one back in Berlin, looking at pictures of the scenery, the idyllic image of an orange train snaking through jungle. Nine hours seemed reasonable until this morning, when I awoke to him packing his bags, the smell of alcohol seeping from his pores. Trembling and ill.

“How was last night?” I said. “Must’ve gone well if you slept over.”

“I hate myself,” he replied, and that’s all. Within thirty minutes, we had checked out and boarded the train.

He hasn’t spoken in about six hours, but in fairness, four he spent sleeping, snoring peacefully in his bunk while I’ve read my book, snacked, perused my phone.

I look again at the message from Astrid I woke up to.

Here you go.

She’s said, followed by pictures of her in that green dress, front and back in her apartment mirror. She looks stunning like that, her hair a little messy, makeup smudged from an evening in the city, wine drunk too, probably. I can tell by that glazed look on her face.

The second picture, then, captioned:

Or do you prefer me without?

And she’s naked, laying back, the high points of her sensual body rising out of fizzy pink water. Some kind of bath bomb situation, evidently. This is what I wanted, and it’s extraordinarily erotic, but looking at it in the cold light of day in a train cabin that smells of two unwashed men and the dinner plates the buffet service hasn’t collected yet, the effect is not quite as intended.

Tbh only thing missing is me in there with my–

I pause and check the world clock app. 9:15AM in Berlin. I go back and delete what I wrote. Bit weird now, considering it’s her morning, and she’s definitely not in the bath still.

I look at the picture some more anyway, zooming in on different parts, like her collarbone, poking out like that with the angle she holds her neck, the same with her hip, a white peak jutting out of the water. My rapt interest in anatomy, driven by the pressure I feel to enjoy her a suitable amount.

Men like my grandfather would have gone their whole lives without seeing a woman like this. Maybe once, if they were lucky, and they’d keep a picture of her in their breast pocket or paint her on the side of a bomber jet and go to war. And in the 15th century, you’d carve exquisite statues of bodies like this. Paint masterpieces, and you’d turn her into some ethereal goddess with angels flying all around her, spend years working on a portrait in an attempt to communicate your feelings with a brush and oils, marble and chisels. Driven half mad by her. Compelled to preserve her beauty for eternity.

Here I am, looking at Astrid on my phone. A body worthy of museums, her frame, not gilded, but a clear silicone phone cover that has been yellowing progressively with use. I’m aware I don’t deserve to be looking at this. The best I can do is turn my screen away from the window so Jonas cannot see her too.

Sorry, was asleep lol. Looking hot af tho! 🥵

At the end of my message I add the red faced, profusely sweating emoji with its tongue out to really drive the point home, and send it, half hoping it won’t deliver. It does.

Back out to the conversations page to the chat with Evie. Something to stare at and feel bad about. Thinking about you. Why did I write that? Divine intervention that it didn’t send. A reason to believe God is watching over me.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious I’m demented. What else could explain it? To be the kind of man who has a girlfriend that others would die for, letting me do whatever to her, a folder on my phone now of pictures that the weirdos in her Instagram comments would pay real money to look at. Each night, saying she loves me down the phone, and I text a girl I knew for two months last summer? What way would my brain show up in an MRI scan? Very abnormal, the doctor would mutter, and I’d be like, yeah, I had an inkling.

Maybe I’m just curious, seeking closure. I’d like to know how she’s doing. What colleges she applied for. What she thought of the leaving cert, if she found it hard. She would have finished this week, maybe last. What was it like for her? Desks lined up in some PE hall, no doubt. Old convent windows, summer sunshine catching dust. Her hands smoothing the docket, nails painted. Colourful nails always, and hair done up in some elaborate double plait French thing. She hated how flat she thought her hair was. Then going out to the pub afterwards, a bottle of Corona with a wedge of lime in the neck, going down easy. Eighteen now. Wow. I never wished her a happy birthday. Would have felt weird doing it.

I go through my pictures. There aren’t many, only the ones Jen took on her camera and sent to me. I know where to find them, at the beginning of the roll underneath all those nightclub shots and pictures of Astrid in Italy. Dalia and Elias at the lake. Me and Jonas in the park last September. It’s been a long time since I was here, staring at that one photo I once obsessed over. It’s the only good one I have of her. At the festival, taken in the crowd, and I'm looking at her, she doesn't see me doing it, and her face luminous, dusted with glitter. She was amazing. If only I–

New message from Astrid.

Thank you for your enthusiasm. Anything for my fans.

I exhale a laugh. That’s funny. Amusement is followed by the dreadful sense I’ve been caught doing something illegal. Wondering why I’m reliving all this old stuff. What am I trying to feel? I tap the corner of the picture, delete it, and Evie vanishes. I relax my shoulders, relieved, absolved of sin.

“Something good on your phone?” Jonas says.

“Nah, I was trying to text Astrid, but I have a poor signal.”

“Ah. Yes. We are in the middle of nowhere.”

“Yeah?” I peer out at oceans of dense vegetation, mist layered between the trees. “Long journey, isn’t it?”

He looks at his phone. “Three hours to go, then another four on the bus.”

“Music to my ears.”

He attempts a laugh.

“Do you want to talk or something?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. We can also not talk, if that’s what you prefer.”

“Talking would be nice if my head was clear, and I didn’t feel so unwell. Sorry. I know I’m not bringing a lot of fun on this journey for you. I thought it would be better, but…” he trails off miserably, and I nod. “It’s fine. Been there. We can also just sit.”

“Is it okay for me to say I don’t want to do this kind of thing anymore? I mean, going out and drinking so much and having so many drugs.”

I chuckle. “That’s the classic thing, isn’t it? We always say that, and then a few days later we’re out doing it all again. The circle of life. You mean that now, but I know you.”

“I think I mean it. I’ve had enough. I am tired of being sick and worrying so much about the things I may have said or done. My life has been this way for so many years.”

“Mine too.”

“It ruins everything.”

“Like with that girl last night?”

He chews his lip. “Nothing happened. I was too drunk. She left me to sleep on the couch and I ran away in the morning before she woke up.”

“Oh.”

“And I don’t want things to be like that anymore. I don’t want to feel so stupid. She was a nice person, and I humiliated myself.”

My phone sits hot in my palm, a token of my guilt and stupidity. “Maybe you’re right, then. Maybe we should stop.”

“You think you will?”

I almost tell him about last night, and the text, and Evie and the reasons I felt driven to, as I so often do when high and lonely, when that innate melancholy I carry creeps in, but I stop myself. I don’t talk about the past with people from my present. There is no point. It’s over, and I have already walked away from it.

“Yeah, I think I’ll probably have to. I recognise it isn’t doing me any favours.”

A half-smile, then. “What will Elias and Dalia think?”

“Of us going all straight-edge? I dunno. We’ll find out in Berlin.” I stretch my arms and neck, stiff from sitting so long. “I think I’ll walk the corridors for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay.”

And as I do that, stroll up and down the hallways, peeking into other cabin, using the bathroom, admiring nature from a window at the rear of the train, I consider the good intentions and promises I have made in my life. The girlfriends I promised I’d always care about, the grades I said I’d uphold, the fitness I said I’d reach, the bedroom I said I’d eventually clean, friends I swore I’d stay in touch with… Saying I’ll stop doing drugs is kind of like that, just something said for the sake of saying it, to create a pretence that I’m a person who makes wise or healthy choices without ever intending to follow through. I can’t stand the pressure. I’ll act this way in Thailand for Jonas’ benefit, and feel better for it, knowing in a month I’ll be in the Berghain toilets again, accepting mystery pills from people in latex vests.

Back in the cabin, he reclines, leafing through his travel guide. “All good?” he says, and I nod. “I think I’ll try to sleep for a bit.”

“Okay then. If you sleep too long, I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

I lay down, my face in the pillow and listen to sounds of pattering rain, squeaky bunks and the pages of the book, and I sleep, deep, sound, all the way to the end of the line.

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#lucky boy 2011 #he's still suffering #but on purpose now i guess #we love an intentional man #nudity cw

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