feeling hungry and dirty to the immaculate ones consuming their
doughnuts within. He made funny faces and danced in front of the
window where a young man and woman sat at a counter looking onto the
commotion and air pollution of Bangkok. He pretended to kiss the woman
through the glass. She laughed and he kissed her more. Then as the man
was putting his doughnut into his mouth, Jatupon opened his own mouth
widely as if, through the glass, to rip it out of the man's teeth with
his partially rotten fangs. The couple laughed and the man motioned
them inside. They ran in and were given doughnuts. Like then, sweets
had an antithesis of meanings for him. They made him feel as one of
the elite, carefree and happy and yet at the same time reminded him of
the disparity to which he was one of the largest masses--that being the
underclass.
Half an hour later, from his gluttony, the box was empty. He drank
some bottled water and fell asleep to more images of Laotian queens
walking through cocoa fields with their little black birds. When Kazem
came home with more shopping bags and saw the symbol of a more
auspicious life that he wished to share with his brothers totally
devoured by one alone, he wanted to vituperate him if not slap him
around a few times. He restrained himself since, for other reasons, he
did not want him to again run away. He saw that Suthep was not in the
room for whatever reason and this absence triggered in him a desire to
molest the youngest. It would be a punishing pleasure, a desperate
hegira from one's solitary domain to brief moments of coupling, banging
onto empty walls, the release of stress, and the intimacy of "love".
And yet he again restrained himself by comparing it to the gloom after
masturbation. To Kazem, a boy shoved off into manhood, sex with
Jatupon was an innocuous pleasure like some marijuana or a brief roller
coaster ride but the gloom was of being a puppet of wanton desire for
something that was far from his ultimate wish. And gloom for a man of