"I was gambling in Havana//I took a little risk//Send lawyers guns and money//Dad get me out of this" -Warren Zevon

This is for my parents on my birthday. For both of you. Even if I dreamt of only the one.




(Half Moon Bay, California)

I turned 24 at midnight after a long and hot day wandering street markets in Bangkok. Something ate me the night before (Hogan says, they're not bedbugs, but they live in the bed and bite you - great) so I had little pinpricks of sharp pain in my back and the sensation of tiny things crawling on me all day. I sat in the lounge with a few new friends and had a cheers. They're good folks, but it was odd and touching to be at a table of relative strangers when the clock struck twelve. My new friend from Germany reminded me or I wouldn't have noticed.

When I finally slept I dreamt in vivid color, by far the most realistic dream I've ever had. It lasted, or so it felt, from the moment my eyes fluttered closed to this morning when I woke up with them wet with tears. I had to come down and play with the lodge's two month old puppy to rebalance and remind myself where I was. That there was still good. That little had changed. I need to share it.

But first, you need to understand.

If my last entry was all you'd ever heard about my father, it would be a discredit to the greatest man I know. I wrote that for the people who know him and know me well enough to know all that I'm about to say. As I didn't apologize for yesterday, I'm still learning to tell the whole story. I can still only capture a small slice.

If you don't know him, if you don't know me, I'd die and kill for him. And he would for me. It's just something I know with certainty. The way I know algebra and cosmology (he taught me the both of them - and me with my number problems, not bad Pops). Nowhere have I found a match for his dedication and drive, his humility and creativity, his insight and curiosity. Without him I wouldn't be here. Neither Thailand nor alive. On a bad day that's a conflicting thing, but when it all comes together, when the world opens up, how can I thank him (them!) enough times and with enough resolve? As with all fathers and I salute them all. Blessings to those who can stick it out. Curses to those who leave. Blessings again to those who don't have the chance to do either. I find myself talking about him while I'm here or anywhere. Telling stories about him, or just as often, telling his stories. When I speak, I sometimes hear his words and his voice sputter out, but I don't pretend to be half the man he is. Maybe a quarter. In flashes, a third.

My dream was a bit like the movie The Hangover - where drunken idiots lose a night to a blackout and have to rebuild from the pieces - meets the movie Excess Baggage, where rich, spoiled, pretty-girl Alicia Silverstone (spoiler alert: I'm Alicia) gets kidnapped and falls in "Patty Hearst" with the gruff but truly lovable Benicio del Torro. Leave it to me to dream two shitty light hearted comedies into one dark introspective film of sweeping emotional repercussion.

I was on a great journey in Thailand with two friends (weird!) the same two I'm with here (weird!). I had too much to drink and fell asleep (weird!). When I woke, I wasn't in the same hotel I'd fallen asleep in. As though I'd woken and sleepwalked there. The lads were fucking with me and wouldn't tell me what had happened. They just kept laughing and saying cryptic things. It was a nice place. Palatial, even. I couldn't figure out why we were there.

The environment had changed. Out the window, I saw yellow sand sweeping to the horizon in every direction. I went down the hall to the bathroom, because like the hostel I'm in now, it had only grimy, red-brick and shared bathrooms, even in the presidential suite. On my way back I heard a commotion. When I looked out the window again, the building was being swarmed by armed men with black masks and black uniforms. I found two dead security guards and tried to pull a gun off one of their hips. It was a dinky taser, but I hid around the corner and waited for them to come. When I came face to face with one of the invaders, I held it to his head and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Well, something happened. He laughed and smacked me with the butt of his assault rifle. I swam in darkness. When I awoke I was still asleep. I'd been kidnapped for ransom.

The man running the show turned out to be a reasonable enough guy. Clever, dedicated and he needed the money for something I couldn't identify, but it felt like something more important than I could do with it. Still, a harsh creature. Shouting at me and prodding me on at gunpoint.

We wound up in a dark train tunnel underground, walking the tracks from station to station. The Boss was getting agitated. Things weren't going to plan. It was all taking too long.

He grabbed at the ceiling and a hatch opened, the size of an old television screen. Beyond the opening it was wide enough to pass through, but I was suffering crippling claustrophobia. A ladder rolled out where the hatch opened and the Boss seemed to say, "Well. Climb or die."

I tried to explain I couldn't fit, I just couldn't. It was too small, I'm too afraid, but he pulled out his gun. I fell to my knees and begged, why are you doing this, what do you want from me, why are we here?

A train passed by and I bellowed at the passengers for help. They saw, they heard, they looked shocked. I knew they'd try, but I also knew it was too late.

As the last car rattled past, I realized someone was on the other side of the tracks, pacing and wringing his hands. He was in faded blue jeans, a lightweight maroon t-shirt, white sneakers and a silly straw hat like a middle-aged woman would wear in Cancun. Of course Pops had come.

He didn't say a word to the Boss, he talked to me. He said it was alright and the rest was jumbled by the haze of the dream but I felt love and tenderness and understanding sweeping over me, consuming and calming me. He threw something and I caught it. I shouted, another train rocketed past, and it all went black again.

The haze cleared and I was in a dingy bar with my companions somewhere strange. They were unfazed. Either nothing had happened or years had passed and the fear and confusion had melted away. Something jabbed at my leg through my pocket with an odd and cold sharpness. I stood and walked to the window and pulled out the artifact - a tiny laughing Buddha, cast in brass. The weight was off and I turned him over to reveal the cavity inside. There was a very small tube of paper tucked into his gut. When I pulled it out, it was two Thai banknotes, a twenty and a fifty, green and blue, shimmering with color and crisp, though I had just unfurled them from their confines.

When I flipped them, my fathers unmistakable script. I'll see it clearly forever.

On the green it said:

"Boy,
I'll miss your drum."

On the blue:

"You are gorgeous."

The second was signed with the chicken-scratch autograph we share.

I knew, somehow he'd traded lives with me. His for mine. I wouldn't have asked for it. My mouth said, "so it goes," but I collapsed onto my knees again and wept spasmodically. I woke up in Bangkok on my stiff mattress, both hands swollen with blood and dead asleep, still weeping.

Pops, you teach me so much. I'm in your debt. I hope you get half as much joy from the teaching as I get from learning. I can already hear you saying I teach you too. You dearest of dear shills, you.

Mom, you taught me when I was very young to write down and cherish my dreams - when I was nine, the water moccasin and his fatal bite - the first color dream I remember, excepting the orca nightmare that made me sleep in your bed for a week when I was five. My world would be a shoddier place for the lack of you. Or should I say, I'm a much better man for having you around.

You're both around every corner on this trip, you're both down every alley. You're both in every dream. You're both in every scorching bowl of soup noodles. I love you. I love you. Truly, I love you.





Yer boy,
-Isaac

Location:Bangkok, Thailand