Milk to Ice Cream

As I drive my 30 year-old, 3-wheeled, rusty ice cream cart down a busy Bangkok road, I look over at my daughter Liu every chance I get. She looks almost just like her mother, Milk, did-- minus the little bits of me, that is.

Big light brown eyes, high cheeks, little chin, electrifying smile, eyebrows angled like she’s angry even when she’s happy.

I miss Milk every day, every hour… nearly every minute. Thankfully I have Liu, a constant reminder of the woman I loved until I couldn’t love anymore.

I went to Thailand looking for a good time. I was 24 then and I worked remotely, so the cheap, fun living was appealing. I could dress nicely, pamper myself, and have a truly decent place on my modest salary as an editor.

One Friday night I met up with a few Thai friends. They took me to a fancy club that I could barely afford; but beautiful women gravitate towards high drink prices, so I suppose you get what you pay for. On my way back from the bathroom I bumped into Milk, and it was actually an accident (unlike so many other girls I had bumped into intentionally to start conversation). She turned around to identify the assailant, and I bowed quickly to apologize. It was probably my improper, awkward bow that made her smile, but as she did it seemed like they cut the lights on in the club, it was like that first hit of bright colors you get 30 minutes after popping good E, like a 4^th of July finale. We both suddenly burst into laughter.

We exchanged eye contact another 10 or 20 times from across the room over the next hour, smiling each time even more than before. Her eyes were like the sun before it sets—beautiful and easy and calming and inspiring, and then they would be gone, and I would be left with the reminder of the beauty on the horizon. I hate myself for it, but I can’t remember quite how they looked, and my eye shape shows too much on Liu for her eyes to make me melt the way Milk’s did.

I looked over at her again and she was leaving. I got one of my friends to come with me, in case she didn’t speak English. We stumbled through the packed crowd that was jumping up and down to a Thai band on the other side of the club. I got out the door and scanned the groups of high society Bangkok youth smoking cigarettes and mingling. I found her. I ran to her like a fool in love. I told her my name. I did everything in my power to make her smile. If her eyes were a sunset, her smile was like the clean shallow Southern Thai ocean below it— beautiful and dazzling and refreshing and invigorating, but unlike the eyes, I can remember every millimeter of that smile, every slight gap, every crease in her lips.

I gave her my number and I told her that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She called me the next day.

Public affection must be done covertly in Thailand. I would love to take taxis with her; she would sit in the middle in the backseat, always much closer than she needed to be. Her smooth soft thighs would get me hard instantly when she pressed them up against my denim covered legs, the smell of her expensive shampoo would make me relax my shoulders, her shoulder touching mine would feel like a prayer; I hadn’t turned Buddhist at that point, so cab rides were the extent of my spirituality.

When she became aroused, her armpits would release strong odors that stung my nostrils; it was always clear to me when she was turned on. She also had a special smell when she was ill; it seemed to come out of every pore on her body. I hated it when she got the flu, I could smell her nausea. She pointed out to me after the fourth time we slept together that we had the same body odor. It was true. I thought it was odd that two people, born as far away as two people could be born from each other, had identical smells. The one thing I don’t hate about myself is my smell, because I can smell my armpits after a day out in the heat and it will bring me back to her for a moment.

Her spoken English was poor, but she could understand most of what I said, as long as I kept it simple. This meant unnecessary babble was kept to a minimum. It made me realize how over-intellectualized my past romances were. No longer was I trying to say things I thought would impress her, I was trying to do things to make her love me.

She would always say ‘yeah’ with enthusiasm, and more high pitched than any other words, and she would add the falling tone of ‘chai’ (yes in Thai) to it. It would always make me chuckle. I hate myself for not recording it.

After 2 years of perpetual visitations to Thailand, I loved her more than ever. Her English was better, and my Thai existed. Every time we were together I felt a rush I hadn’t felt since middle school (perhaps in a movie theater inching my hand towards a female partner, praying she wouldn’t pull away). I remember still, 2 years later, feeling tingles run down my neck every time a finger-tip made contact with her smooth, tattooed back, or her arms and legs with their blonde hair that caught the light when she was outside.

I was skeptical of Thai girls’ fidelity at the time—and still am for that matter—which is why I always wore a condom for the first few years. She had had a tumor in her uterus when she was 18, and the chances of her having kids were low, but I didn’t want to risk disease, and it was cleaner that way, and I never had a problem coming with her, condom or not.

On my 9^th visit in 2 years I applied for a long term Visa and it was approved. I bought a one bedroom condo at a fancy place in Ekkamine; I would have been happy somewhere cheaper, but status was important to her, so I suppose it was important to me too.

She kept a bedroom at her mother’s house, but her mother hated her—she looked just like her drunk of a father who had run off to the North to start a new life, and her mother resented her for it. No matter how much I insisted, I never got to meet her mother, until the funeral.

One night, 3 years after I first met her, as I reached over to my bedside table for an American condom I had shipped to me by a friend, she grabbed my arm and pulled my hand back. Then, she moved her leg down, lying flat on the bed, exposing the scars from her tumor removal, something I had only had brief glances of in the past—she had always artfully used a sheet or a leg or something else to cover the scars in well-lit situations. She looked up at me over top of her with no smile whatsoever, her mouth small and pouting and her eyes bigger than ever. She nodded yes.

36 days later, I found out I was going to be the father of a miracle child. I accidently got drunk the night she told me the news; I forgot to keep count of how many scotch and sodas I had had. At the time I could only think of how happy I was with myself—I knew for the first time, unequivocally, that I didn’t shoot blanks.

Me, the flaky ex-pat white guy, was going to be a dad… I was going to start a family in a Bangkok apartment.

I spent the pregnancy doing my best not to drink, and keeping Milk from smoking. Her petite little body was magical with that round, taught belly. I hate myself for not taking photos of her naked and pregnant; I remember telling her it was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen (and I remember meaning it) but I can’t remember the exact shape.

Then Liu came, during a rainstorm in August. Like every man before me who looked down at their own baby, I knew what life was—for a split second.

Now, 8 years, 3 months, and 12 days later, I have an 8 year old daughter smiling at me every time I get a chance to peek over at her, just like her mother would smile at me when I would get a chance to glance at her before.

I don’t use a computer anymore; I mostly spend my time with Liu. We sell ice cream in the day and flowers at night. She’s a great saleswoman, like her mother; she knows when to joke, knows when to be firm, and knows just what to charge people. I’ve never been good at that part of business, I’m a visionary type; the second someone tells me about their troubles I cave and give them my products at cost. Not Liu, though; she’s cut throat. I don’t know how she does it, but it’s good for business.

While Liu is at school, I go to meditate. It’s the only time I ever get moments where Milk isn’t the foundation of my consciousness. It seems I love her more since she has been gone; my mind has since created an image of her that has no flaws, not that she had many in reality—but then again reality is an illusion that I create, so who knows what her flaws really were.

I thought we would be together forever. I dove into our love without any thought that the lake might dry up. Now she is a bitter and constant reminder that nothing is forever. I hate myself for being such a fool; I would have skipped the gym sessions and the day trips without her had I known I only had 7 years, 3 months, and 21 days with her.

I do my best to spread an appreciation for joy and death through my business; no one buys flowers or ice cream because they are going to last—they buy them to please themselves and others in the short term. They buy them to begin a night of romance, or to give as a gift to a meaningful host; they buy them to share with those they care about, or just to make the moments we have together more enjoyable.

I have taught Liu all of this. She is already a better Buddhist than me.

If life is suffering, then I sure am living.

I will never—and I mean never—be able to rid myself of all desire, though. No matter what, I am always going to desire that beautiful, petite, big eyed Thai girl that made me so mad with love that I changed all my plans (or actually made plans for once); that girl that was my world one day, and then gone from this planet so suddenly the next.

So now here I am, a man without a country, a man without his woman, a man without any chance of attaining enlightenment.

The only thing I have left is my daughter, and the little bit of Milk in her.