Hurricane Blues: A Surrealist Tale of Love Between a Man and his Country

By Scott Ibex

Jack Mathews finished his second year of medical school and fled to Thailand recovering from the untimely death of his sister Scarlet. He aimed to make peace with her passing and marry the American dream, but nothing went as planned.

The desperate journey through southeastern Asia ravaged Jack’s blind patriotism with a political revelation he was ill-prepared to endure. He escapes to Australia only to face a surreal courtship with Lady Liberty Ward. Though Jack resolves to confront his fears and save her soul, where his courage takes him is a story still plaguing Generation X, from the false flag blues of a failed occupy movement to an uncertain battle with invisible enemies defining the terrorist age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9780983129219

Book preview

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ALPHABET SOUP

HER SILENCE ROARED, yet, I could not hear a thing. My sister was the only person who could call my bluff without saying a word.

I cried when she died, though somehow, I persevered. There was an underlying gravity, fresh in nature like innocent truth. Potential was a bowl of boiling letters, visceral thoughts deconstructed, unsympathetic, and too hot to consume. Instant emotions played upon my vision like a flickering candle, leaning so much to the west it might blow out at any second and then racing oblong to the east. The core of the flame rose and fell at the whim of the wind.

Half the country was brain-dead—following heroic ghosts with no hope to walk a path of modern consequence. Moments sprinted from conscience like a spooked horse—yearning for sex, drugs, music, and anything else that could make me feel alive.

Lost and groping for answers, it was the perfect time to travel away from all I knew in search of life, liberty, and the pursuit of something completely different.

I stopped trying to focus. Survival was necessity. Necessity was a departure from the ordered chaos of super-ego, a release from emotional handcuffs. I sought primal instincts, mindless activity, and absent-minded conquest. It was too dangerous to question my former self, feel regret, loss, worry, shame, guilt, pain, remorse, or the silently mounting bane of self-awareness.

A faint light blinked in my heart, but my soul was clouded. Aimlessly, I wandered amongst spirits of unrequited love and stretched unto their merciless behest. I searched in vain for eternity to forget the collective purpose behind the present. My pain was lost and it would not be necessary to face it. Life was unfair and I owned it blind.

Have you ever met my kind? Maybe, because odds are, you don't watch too much reality television. You're not a square, thoughtlessly loving an exhaustively sheltered life behind the iron-clad mentality of your gated little community. But, did you recognize me for who I am? Did you bother to leave your holy preconceptions to understand mine?

I don't want you to get the wrong idea—that I saw you as this or that. Everyone is complicated, impossible to boil down to a or b. Everything is plastic-elastic, shameless fish-eyed objections to frozen moments, or in the aging alternative, practiced acceptance.

As I changed, giantess truths wrapped in blonde cellophane revealed themselves. Guarded secrets packaged for earthy delight danced before my eyes. And the mystic ride on the ancient lost highway took me softly to the playground of dreams.

Along for the journey was Gunther Craft—my best friend from medical school, my Grandfather—the only living soul I trusted with all my heart, and, of course, Liberty Ward—the ironic answer to everything.

Those are the living characters who swayed my feelings through every part of that candle-like spectrum. They gave me companionship which kept me alive.

I was recovering from something I didn't understand, searching for answers without knowing the questions. Yet, I was sure of one thing. I couldn't stand people who were content to be contrived.

LIBERTY

AN INESCAPABLE ROMANCE hung in the balance. When love hits, the nastiest man can nary resist its allure. It's a drug like everything else and my stoned hope was beautiful fuel.

I don't remember taking exams that second year of medical school. My sister Scarlet had passed away a month before. She was my best friend, most trusted companion, and greatest confidant. She accepted me for who I was.

The senselessness of her death was the most appalling part—a car accident on the freeway. I tried to tell myself it could've happened to anyone, but it didn't help.

As Liberty spoke through my tears, a strange comfort took hold. Before her, there was only Jane Doely; the girl I was sure I'd marry, who took a different path. When she dumped me I slept with as many women as I could. I felt wronged by love, and resolved to stay away from it. After college, I moved to Manhattan.

Liberty waltzed into the theater of my life. I gave her a private tour straight away. We had a childlike jaunt around the famous auditorium I worked in. On center stage, the ivory-skinned green-eyed beauty left her sweet feet, flew into the air, and wrapped herself around me. She kissed me on the cheek as I held her in my arms.

Thank you for being with me! she said meaningfully, without taking her eyes off mine.

I kissed her back, gently on the lips, and we sprinted through the wind to a romantic downtown fantasy. Early the next morning, I left her hotel room.

In the afternoon we met for coffee at a cafe. Our table had a leg too short. I wedged a napkin underneath the broken support and she kissed me again.

Every free hour I had was spent by her side that night. She flew back to Australia the morning after and called me before boarding the plane. Her voice gave me butterflies. My skin was tingling, my heart was racing, and my soul was alive.

Time presented obstacles. A week later I left my phone in a pub. All my contacts were lost in cyberspace. I thought it would be the end of us.

It wasn't. She researched every Jack Mathews in the country until she found me.

She'd send presents each Christmas and we'd write three times a week. We were young lovers communicating exclusively through e-mail and our instant communication found deep feelings inside me. My heart began to swoon.

We planned to travel after my summer internship in China. She arranged a leave of absence from work. She scheduled a tour of Australia and the states. All the tickets were booked. The car was reserved. It was going to be perfect.

Only one stop in Thailand separated Liberty and I. One stop I should have never made.

TICKET TO BANGKOK

GUNTHER, MY FRIEND from Medical School, arranged the trip to Thailand. My first instinct was not to go. The promise of Liberty weighed upon me, but I traveled east for adventure. Part of me needed Thailand and its free-love culture. My sister Scarlet's passing had me in knots. To untie them I sought release from institutional expectations. Gunther knew this. We sat in a Hong Kong pub and he threw me the pitch.

Come on Jack, ditch the bitch for a week and roll. It's gonna be the time of your life and you know it. Consider it a bachelor party. I know you're not the kind of person to go running off into the arms of a stranger without experiencing life on the road—that's my bag. You've got an opportunity here to see Thailand, paradise, the land of smiles, and I don't wanna go alone, he spoke with strong conviction and that most difficult to refuse Southern charm which always made sense to me.

I—I want to go, you know. I mean that's all part of me wants, but I don't know if I can. This girl, she's what I want. Thailand is a distraction—a beautiful and possibly necessary distraction—but a distraction, I said.

"Ah, ya can't live your life pretending you've got what you don't already have. How many dang times have you told me, Thailand is what you need? How many times did I float you a rub and tug in Wan Chai because you said, I'll get you back in the land of smiles. Now you wanna back out of this? I can't believe my ears! Three words man: Not—Your—Girlfriend!"

Yet!

Exactly, yet! Which means not now, which translates in the more evolved language of Ching-lish to: She—not—your— girlfriend—American—fool!

We started laughing and I couldn't say no. Maybe it was the ghost of Jane Doely toying with my mind, or maybe Gunther had a way with words. He was right about Liberty not being my girlfriend. Part of me wanted her to be, but, we barely even spoke to each other. I hadn't seen her in three years. If I passed up Thailand and our relationship didn't work out, think what I'd miss?

After a long pause to dodge Gunther's light-hearted stare, I finally spoke,

I have only one thing to say: bring on the liquor, bring on the drink, bring on the sweet ladies into whose mouths I'll sink!

Ha! Gunther screamed and crashed his bottle atop mine.

The drink exploded in my hand and beer was everywhere. The bartender starting yelling at us in Cantonese and Gunther flung blood from his finger directly at him.

Mum mum chung pao! he screamed and we ran out of that old world bar to the birdhouse casino in Macau.

I bought my ticket to Bangkok the next morning. It was time to blow my loan money through a one-track emotionless mind of no regret. Pleasure made sense. Guilt would rest with fear and monkey suit greed.

LAND OF SMILES

WHEN THE PLANE LANDED I threw thoughts of Liberty out the window. Sister Scarlet, on the other hand, was always present in my aching heart. I thought of her everyday and making peace with her passing was something I could not do lightly. Being with Gunther helped me through hurt I was not ready to face. It was a big part of the decision to come here. I needed to be around a fellow hooligan at heart, a clown who could crack a joke on the spot and make me forget. I shook the thoughts of my freshly buried sister aside and slipped into a small white taxi.

White Elephant Hotel, Soy 6, I said to the driver.

An hour later we arrived. I dropped my bags in the room and mozied over to Gulliver's tavern.

After a month in the country of pork and rice, grilled beef was a forgotten dream. I ordered a burger and A, a slight girl with kind eyes and a sugary smile, introduced herself. When the topic of her profession came up she told me, I have special job.

She was the first lady I met in Bangkok and I didn't see it coming. She was so sweet and gentle, yet she had an agenda.

I looked around to see a litter of Asian dreams eyeing me from snooker tables and it lit me up. They were waiting their turn to enter the competition, but this was no game. These girls knew I was a paycheck.

I thought of America, a supersized world with thousands of dreaming girls wearing expensive get-ups to access millions. Love was always for sale in the land where business ruled king, but the scales were different here.

In Thailand, it was for a night and a means to support a struggling family, 48 dollars was a small fortune, and every man was a player. The gals were experts at making you forget what you thought you ought to remember. Beauty has a way. It always wins too, even in its earliest parable explaining the birth of humanity—sin existed because of Adam and Eve. In 2004, Eve met me in a Thai bar and called herself A.

So you come here, first time? she asked.

Yeah, interesting place, how long have you been here? Did you grow up in the city?

No, I am from the North. Chang Mai, the mountains. It's beautiful there.

I've seen pictures.

What about you? Where you frooom?

She had this distant musing gaze, a nonchalance of sweetest ease, the kind of ease that came with practice. Practice breeding a comfort you forget to question.

New York.

Oh wooow.

She giggled in mellow bliss. Loose black hair paraded around her left shoulder. It glistened and spoke in twirls.

Hey! said a familiar male voice walking into the tavern.

A, this is my friend, Gunther, I introduced the two.

Sawadee ka, A cooed politely.

What's that mean? Gunther asked.

It's hello in Thai, I said.

Sounds nice, shouldn't be too hard to get used to, he said resting a hand on his side with his elbow cocked out proudly.

I smiled at Gunther who began grinning tightlipped with his eyes darting around the room, taking each detail into the steel trap of his sober mind.

A, we'll see you later, I ended the conversation. It was time to move.

We headed out to town. The mood of adventure struck deep. Stories about Bangkok could fill many books, but we were focused on survival.

The newspaper said a smoke bomb and tear gas were recently set off at a popular afterhours spot called Soy Cowboy. It was supposedly one in a series of rebel attacks by urban dissidents. We made a pact not to go there, so it was off to the artist colony instead.

All the pubs there were named after famous painters: Van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Goya, and Degas to name a few. Selling beautiful women in the name of art was an exotic form of tribute—but that was Thailand for you.

Van Gogh's place was first. When I entered, a striking young vixen approached with a game of Jenga. Her skin was flawless; her face a vision of eastern symmetry. As she leaned over the counter and offered a hand in greeting her voice sung like a sleepy bird, Sawadee ka.

She was mesmerizing and my salutation came only as a matter of habit.

I glanced over to Gunther who seemed equally enamored with his catch of the day. Classical music played softly in the background. I wondered what Van Gogh would think, but he wasn't there to ask.

My girl's name was Modge and we played a silly game. She leaned over the counter and kept pretending to drop puzzle pieces on the floor so she could accentuate her ass as she bent over to pick them up. It was extremely effective advertising, but both Gunther and I had wanderlust. We said goodbye and headed for Picasso bar across the street.

Gunther was completely plastered by this time. I only knew one or two people in my life who had the ability to get as drunk as him, but I never knew anyone who could stay wasted so many days in a row. He could've gone on like this for a week straight.

Scottish blood, he said raising a tumbler of Jameson to another Thai beauty.

Scoffi blu, she incorrectly repeated.

It brought him to a fit of maniacal laughter that barely missed her eye catching stare. If you didn't know him, you'd think it was the funniest thing a man ever heard in his life. He was cackling in a purely 5th grade response to the apparent stupidity of her missed pronunciation attempt.

The laughter perked me up. It was simply real and lost all my confusion on the spot. I imagined myself as one of two red-blooded American sailors in Thai paradise, doing everything that was virtually impossible in our fear-mongering compassionately conservative country. We left Picasso to check out another club and everything had closed. We looked at each other, flexed our whiskey muscles, and headed for Soy Cowboy.

It's the safest place in town, Gunther said, "it's not like they're going to set off another bomb there. Dissidents done been there and done that."

In a strange way, I thought he was right.

When we got there we couldn't believe our eyes. The walls were black with soot and there was a raised pole-dancing floor taking up over half the space. It was littered with Thai girls.

About six of them were