Gay In Public Toronto

Phongsali /
morning dense fog and freezing rain. I spent the morning buying umbrellas, gloves, socks, balaclava. Chinese products found here are the worst quality. And merchants - also Chinese - bitter gain, resent the bargaining. They try to intimidate customers gesturing and talking loudly.
Small mountain people selling the same items that I, at the same price prohibitive for them. Costumes "mao" cotton yarn, dyed, woven and hand sewn. The woman wears a sort of modestly large handkerchief over his cap to hide. Some son braided beaded colored plastic exceed his neck. Timid, frightened by the merchants, they stand so close to each other as decency permits, as if to reassure each other. Barefoot in the mud, the men and women tend to the shop they covet red socks, looking down and speaking voice almost inaudible. In
noodle hut, a family is eating with me. One son has a black eye. Yelling, gesticulating, gesturing to sudden and violent overthrow his soup, he really looked like a beaten child. The whole family speaks loud and hard, it's more like Chinese than the Lao. But the soup is good and hot with a kind of watercress.

Thoughts jolting. I'm starting to see really.

...

Such fog. How to walk without getting lost?

I had the idea of buying blanket into a jacket, since here we do not find a warm sweaters. I even dreamed that I started a trend. But a Chinese market overtaken me and makes coats for children in blankets polar large colorful flowers.

In a restaurant on the highway, a deaf man who washed inarticulate cries chopsticks, sitting at the best table. Another, who resembles him, dislocated his three-piece suit of mafioso, passes them to dry hair.

Four days without washing my ... At the hotel, I negotiated for a reservation today with hot water. It must be ready at noon. I wait near the brazier. Wait, wait, have a purpose. My goal in life: to wash my hair.

Children of the hotel feed the brazier with hot coals kitchens that smell of melted plastic.

Yesterday evening, the nightclub - located on the third floor of the building - sounded in my room. The earplugs did not change anything. Yet pleasure to watch the candle mist out of my mouth. Pleased to be hot under the mountain of blankets. Pleasure to exist.

Yesterday on the bus, I saw a small fire Charli prepare for me, a small fire of kindling as he knows how. And the smile that wrinkles the skin around his eyes. The smile that says
- This fire is to warm you up.
I came here and I found in my silence. My presence makes it even too much space. By eating with people, staying near the fire, walking ... It is here beside me, who is busy.

Further north, it would be China. I will not go. Yet the logic of the journey, always moving towards the unknown ...

Midi. The room is ready. A mental feast, in anticipation of what will run hot on my skin. Leaving me the key, the young man said:
- In fact, there a power outage. No hot water.
Ahahahaha. I'm in Laos! I
flaps on food. The kind of restaurant that I spotted, I arrive just when we just fill the wok with water to clean them. The young deaf woman is sorry. She told me to iron in the afternoon. Ahahah. Phongsali!
I go walking.
On the road, a swarm of children armed with toy-like censers full of coal they are turning over their heads. Long
stair climbing in the fog. Wat a pile appears vaguely in the whiteness. I stay in front of the temple arms dangling, breathing warm. Behind me comes a monk in his saffron shawl. He keeps a pack of cigarettes, obviously bought at the bottom. I smile to see that this brave person but not one that prevents him from wearing socks or a sweater. He does not smile. Embarrassed, he tries to hide his hand in the folds of her dress. Under the vat, laughs softly a fellow that I had not seen and waited.

I resume the route from the hotel, determined to get it makes me boil water for showering. Near the brazier, three white kids warm. Back to the door, they do not see me enter. One of them, a cigarette still burning between his lips, trying to make children laugh from the hotel by swallowing air like a fish. The kids are petrified, his face serious, and it's me laugh.
It appears we compare our purchases. I show my face-to-Subcomandante Marcos, with my balaclava. My scarlet socks. And pride: the red umbrella and blue. They ask if they can come take a shower in my room tonight. Oh yes, three young men naked in my room! What warm the atmosphere.

Yesterday on the bus, Thong got sick of my lack of motivation make conversation. He went to sit near a girl he looked smitten, just something he was caressing her hair surreptitiously with her gloved hands.

The shower! A bucket of hot water to make it last as long as possible by these five degrees ambient.
Standing in the basin, finding clever reuse water already passed, more and more warm. Then when the situation is desperately trying to cool down, resigned to plunge the only towel in the bucket and clothe them.
Oh that's good, half the frozen body, the other Crayfish! Make it last until the cold has taken possession of all water. Dry himself with sin, wrap the hair in and get under the pile of blankets, preferably hilarious. And being there, being there, being there. In this room in a hotel rotten China's most remote city of a country which can not understand anything.

Evening
Near brazier, the girl and the grandmother of the hotel teach me words. Tin ', cow, hua, papancow ... We are tired, especially when I try to tell me (hand) - impossible to transcribe the sound "ain" closed Language ascent to the palace in the throat.
- M '.
- Mmmmain?
- Man?
- M!
- Maïnn?
- M '!
- Mm '?
We laugh.

guide a new group of French joined us near the brazier. Interested in my historical intentions and radio ... If I am paying very expensive, it can translate French into whatever I want. He offered to take me on the boat of his group in Muang Hasta Khoua after tomorrow. Or take advantage of their minibus drops to empty Udom Xai, with a little note. I'll say yes for buses. The boat is exotic, but glossy and full of seven falanga I understand the language, alas!