opinios

At last we were approaching the mountains. We had been riding for hours - most of the afternoon. I realised I had long since missed the turn-off to the temple, but I wanted to go into the mountains anyway. We were still heading due west and I could see ahead that we were only about a ten minute ride from the foot of the mountain range. After a long ride across the plains, I was excited about getting into the mountains. After hours of nothing but rice fields, I needed a bit of variety.

But I was disappointed to find that as we approached the mountains, the road turned south, running along the plain, parallel with the range. I could see dirt tracks up the side of the mountains, but there was no way of getting to them. Unless you went across the fields, that is.

I pulled over and talked it over with Amy. She was up for it.
Some of the fields along the edge of the highway were fenced off, but there were occasional gaps with a narrow dirt path that lead towards the mountains. We found one.

It was slow going and we made a lot of dust, but we started up the mountain. It was a bumpy ride. I was worried about something going wrong with the bike.

"Keep going," Amy yelled. God, I thought, she is so cool. She is even stupider than me.

Eventually it became ridiculous (like it wasn't already) and we had to stop.

We had come up a fair way, but we were in the middle of a bunch of trees and couldn't really see much.

"Let's walk up a bit more," Amy said. "We'll get a great view from up here."

I was worried about the bike. What if someone found it?

"Out here?" she laughed. She had a point.

We walked up for about twenty minutes until we came to a clearing and sat down. I was exhausted, but Amy was right. The view from up there was incredible.

"Do you think everything happens for a reason?" she asked, taking out her bottle of water.

"I don't know. What do you mean?"

"You know. Like this. What are the chances of us meeting and coming here like this? There must be a reason."

"Why must there be a reason?"

"You don't think there is?"

"I don't even understand what that means. What does it mean for there to be a reason?"

"You know, like fate."

"Well what does fate mean? People say it all the time but to me the word doesn't mean anything. How do you define fate?"

"It means things happen for a reason."

"Well..." I looked at her, exasperated.

She laughed and punched me in the arm.

When we got back I was curious to find out where we'd been. I had no idea. I showed Paul on the map. We missed the turn-off, went through Mae Sai and kept heading west.

"Myanmar," he said. "Burma."

The mountain range we were riding around in was the Thai-Myanmar border.

"You shouldn't go there. It's a dangerous border," he said. "Many guerillas."

Amy and I looked at each other. Fuck me, we'd been to Burma.

We had dinner together that night and drinks afterwards. I had beer and Amy was drinking gin and tonic. She had quite a few but showed no sign of getting drunk. She asked me about Australia. I said I had some photos I could show her. They were in my room if she wanted to see them.

She laughed. "That's so cheesy!"

"I didn't mean it like that!"

Actually looking back on it, I suppose I did mean it like that.

We sat on my bed as I showed Amy my photos. I only had a few photos from Australia but she studied them very carefully and asked me lots of questions. She wanted to know where I grew up, what my family was like, how often I saw them, things like that. Strange things. Simple things. She seemed very interested in the answers, though I couldn't figure out why because none really was all that interesting.

She asked me what I was running away from.

"What makes you think I'm running away?"

She laughed. "Of course you're running away!"

She was right, but I wasn't sure what to say. It was complicated. Responsibility? Boredom? Angst. I gave her a long-winded, rather meaningless answer. The feeling that I was spending my entire life with people who I had nothing real to learn from and didn't even really like; the frustration a young man feels when he wants to be different, to control his universe, to be something special, but has learned just enough to figure out that there's no such thing, at least not the way he had always thought about it, and that even if there were he didn't care for it after all; the feeling that every person on Earth, including himself, is just part of some enormous chain gang, shuffling slowly along, thinking the same meaningless thoughts and talking the same meaningless shit until the day they die; from the horrible emptiness that comes with realizing that by any ordinary standards his life is wonderful, that he is on track to get everything he could ever want, that he has nothing whatsoever to complain about, that this is as good as it can get, and that that makes the whole thing an even bigger farce because he never really asked for any of it, it wasn't his idea, he doesn't really care about it and it just doesn't make any sense at all; his promise to himself that if there really is any more to life than this, he is going to find it. And if there isn't, he at least deserves a damn good distraction to make him forget all about it. All of that and more. It was complicated. I tried to explain myself to her but did a poor job. I didn't really understand it myself and it just came out sounding like nonsense, so I gave up.

But Amy listened very carefully. She sat on the bed with her legs crossed. She nodded as I talked and seemed to understand. When I finished she took my hands in hers and looked at me with an expression full of tenderness.

"You are more complicated than you seem," she said. "But life isn't always that complicated. I think that when you are truly happy, your perspective will change and you won't have any of those thoughts any more."

We sat silently for a while.

"You're probably right. I don't know," I said eventually. "I'm just talking bullshit. I was working pretty hard and I guess I really just needed a break. It doesn't matter anymore anyway. I'm having a great time over here and that's all that matters."

She smiled.

"What about you?" I asked, looking forward to changing the subject. "I guess you must be running away as well."

"America," she said firmly. "I'm running away from America."

"What about America?"

Amy hated America. Her parents had moved to California from China when she was very young, so she had lived there nearly all her life. Her only family was in America. But she had left and never wanted to return. Why? She was passionate about it and was able to reel off a long list of things she hated. Capitalism. Starbucks. The Gap. McDonalds. Microsoft. Football. Baseball. Ivy League schools and everyone that went to them (which included her). The TV shows that consumed people's lives. The people all around the country who regurgitated the shit they saw on it in daily conversations because they had nothing original to say. The newspapers and magazines that printed the same bullshit summaries of stuff nobody should have cared about but seemed to anyway. The constant noise; the bombardment of advertising. The idea that there was something wrong with you if you didn't go to a gym every day and move pieces of iron around or stand on one of those stupid machines where you pretended to climb non-existent stairs that took you nowhere. The insidious cultural void that was steadily destroying anything that was interesting and unique in the rest of the world. And most of all the guys. Amy hated American guys.

It all seemed pretty confusing to me. I'd never heard someone be so negative about their own country. She really gave it a hard time. It didn't make much sense. God knows America could be a pain in the arse, but it wasn't that bad.

"So there's a guy involved?" I asked.

She paused for a long time.

"Some guy hurt you, didn't he?" I pressed her.

She bit her lip and took a long time to answer.

"Why do you say that?"

"The Lakers cap." I had no idea what I meant by that. It just didn't seem to fit.

She laughed. "You know for a smart guy you're pretty stupid."

We sat holding hands for a long while, not talking, just listening to each other breathe and enjoying being together. Eventually Amy spoke.

"You're a nice boy," she said.

I laughed. "And you're a nice girl."

"We have a good time together don't we?"

"Yes we do. A very good time," I said, stroking her hair. "God. A hell of a time."

I turned her face towards me and she closed her eyes as I kissed her.

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Submitted by Simon Tierney