Cynical Times

My wife and I were about to leave America for Cambodia as she was Khmer and had been separated from her family for more than thirty years. My wife, Linchy, had been trying to send her family money but our supply was drying up. In a moment of epiphany, I had the idea to return Linchy to her home country.

The tales of woe coming from her family’s communications were incredibly alarming. Not only were they living in a cramped, dark, and also hot little apartment, a space trying to hold six people with only one bedroom, but they were also eating very little, sometimes only having a single egg to divide among them. I wanted so badly to alleviate their poverty and, at the same time, was contemplating getting a doctorate in English literature. It didn’t take me long to realize how ridiculous getting a doctorate was, as I already had two master’s degrees, but the thought of the pressure attending the rigors of a Ph.D. program made me change my mind. The thought of going abroad was not really as conscious a decision as one may think. I began to dream of my recently deceased mother, and in our conversations in that dreamworld, I felt her desire to improve my wife’s and my own life.

We had been living in a cramped situation of our own. The close walls of a basement apartment would sometimes produce claustrophobia so strong that I took up smoking only for the reason of going outside wanting to nurture a kind of ritual that would calm me down.

We were actually getting destitute and I couldn’t find a job even with my two master’s degrees. So, the thought of teaching abroad became ever more appealing.

As soon as I got off the plane I was offered two jobs, taking them both until dropping the first as Dean of the English program at a university because my boss was kind of crazy. But I settled into PUC, which ran like a clock. I was beginning to write at a furious pace and people kept telling me I was a born writer and just use the teaching for a stipend until I got published. So, I immersed myself in the endeavor, becoming tied to my laptop as if I were its slave.

I was looking up at the amazing edifice of Angkor Wat, having strange feelings that I used to be one of its denizens. I seemed to remember the face of the king, Jayavarman VII, and the strange eroticism of the dance troupe who sometimes performed topless, mimicking the temple angels called Apsaras that revealed their stony breasts on the carvings on the walls. It was then that I had an explosive experience of memories of over 100 past lives, once even being a princess in China. But now, I was being seduced into my Cambodian past life, the life of a Cambodian residing in the court of the crimson god/king of Angkor Wat.

I worked around the temple as a fool. I wasn’t exactly a dwarf, but I was of small stature. I entertained the king so well with my acrobatics that I immediately became his favorite performer. Sometimes I would do hilarious hijinks during the Apsara performers, actually reaching up and twitching a nipple or sticking my tongue out at them. They didn’t find me annoying. But actually found me kind of cute. I found myself sleeping with some of them, enjoying their climaxing sighs as I began to discover I had a gift for pleasuring women. I eventually became a favorite sex partner among many of the court ladies hearing in the gossip grapevine about my prowess. I had to divide my days between making love and playing the fool.

My life was very good. I had taken up residence in a room in the temple complex itself. I realized that I was rather a true believer in Hinduism and propritiated my favorite god, Krishna. Sometimes Krishna would appear to me in dreams and would actually dare me to become an ant in my next life. I always fended him off with my pleasure in being a fool and that I hoped to be another one in my next incarnation. Krishna would remind me that I was in his dreamworld not mine, and so I humbly submitted to his will, surprising me that he had already arranged my next life, which wouldn’t be until the 19th century as an American (?) writer having the name of Samuel Clemens. He would be a comic writer, so Krishna was actually helping me along with my comical desires.

Then I recognized that things were getting very bad. Some Buddhists had been aggressively recruiting converts. They had brought the religion from India, but we were staunch Hindus, so we often had fights with them. One even told me about the hell beings realm and I thought he was being difficult and cruel. Then I saw a finger. It was invisible to everyone else, but I recognized it as Krishna’s. As the finger floated in the air, it lightly touched the head of the Buddhist, immediately striking him dead.

After the incident of the dead Buddhist missionary, the others left me alone but other Khmers were being seduced into the religion. I relayed my anxiety to the king and he just shook his head as if not believing me, and motioned to me to start dancing.

After months of the Buddhist incursion, people began dividing up into factions until the Buddhist nightmare spread, creating a kind of holy war between the Hindu camp and the Buddhist one. It seemed like I had a second sight, knowing what was coming. Continue reading →