Pizza in America

"Nature's first green is gold
her hardest hue to hold...
so dawn goes down to day
nothing gold can stay" - Robert Frost

Chanoat, informally Boat,
was a young gay man
(a university student of mine)
in Phetchaburi Province, Thailand
a region of sweltering heat
diverse farms(many still worked by water buffalos)
and a positively teeming natural world
full of omni-present tye-dye colors

He was half-Chinese:
dressed sharply if formally
brought iced green tea for all his professors
at Phetchaburi Rajabhat University

He was from a wealthier family
but rode a yellow motorcycle
had this consuming, glorious fantasy of the U.S.A.
and was tall and fit

He'd accompany me to class
usually carrying the CD player
I'd use to play rock'n roll for the students
(from Cat Stevens to REM to Jonny Lang)

We spent a lot of time together:
he taught me many things about Thailand
and the Thai language:
for example "jing jing" means good luck (maybe)
and "sabay sabay" means something deep but simple
I can't easily define

I took great pains to improve his English,
something I also did for various peasants
(a bad word I use for lack of a better)
but failed to do for most of my students
(I regret this)

Once, he brought me a chocolate birthday cake:
the first one I'd had in many years
and I was touched

Boat spoke and carried himself
very naturally in a feminine way:
homosexuality was obviously in his genes

He once said he was a woman's soul
trapped in a man's body
but living as he did in rural Thailand
he'd never had sex with a man,
and couldn't have openly been gay
(not with any comfort, anyway)

Once I took the whole class
to the movie room
and we all enjoyed Titanic in Thai
(to do it I had to tell a lie)

Once Boat brought me pizza
(which I'd told him I yearned for)
but it was horrible
(devoid of tomato sauce, stale cheese
topped with seafood) :
I promised him again and again that
someday we two
would have pizza in America...
he liked that idea,
dreamt of the U.S.A.
in that stereotypical but not so common way

He would tell me that
if I kept drinking like a fish
I'd surely be fired:
I wasn't.
He'd warn me that I'd die in Thailand:
now and then I wish I had

Once I took him on an elephant ride:
something he'd never done before:
he was concerned about the treatment
of Thailand's entertainment elephants:
I was awed by our rocky ride
at how the elephant plowed through a deep pond
at a bright blue dragonfly that hovered past us

We had many other often anarchic adventures...
(like the time he practically kidnapped me
for a road-trip
and I lost The Beatle's "White Album"
in the car)
but I can't find the energy
to tell you about them

Boat,
while treating me at a sumptuous Japanese restaurant,
said he was made for me,
was in love with me,
wanted me to take him:
I've never been that way
but sometimes wonder
if I shouldn't have pacified him

He became sullen
and jealous(without cause) of my female students,
jealous of my bar girls,
jealous of a nude Hindu statue
in an Italian restaurant in Hua Hin
(where we had very good pizza
with leggy red wine)

He was a thorn in my side
at times,
but he also helped with my depression
toward the end:
once, to cheer me up,
he said:
"you can't edit the past, Aajan Sean" (professor)

my closest friend,
he always called me Aajan Sean

Shortly after Bo the beauty queen
with her modest, dusky sweetness
told me I'd become truly Thai
because I cared for a couple stray dogs
(once I defended one against a dalmation
and was struck with the karmic notion
he might have been Bradley Knowell)
I decided to journey on;

Boat looked sad
and I've often thought of him since,
can still hear his precise, accented voice
almost like yesterday

Boat later studied for a year in Canada;
I don't know if he ever
had pizza in America
or if he would have liked it
after all;
I think he would have

This story is true
and I'm glad to tell it
though many will mis-interpret...
and I don't fully understand
just why I did

"... Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference." - Frost