This is a procrastination post, straight up. I’m sitting in a coffee shop on Phaholyothin Road across from my current home in Bangkok, Thailand. It’s nice. There is a cat themed bar on the roof, and a hostel next door named “Everyday Sunday,” because, I’m assuming, people here love Sunday.

I’ve been posting lots and lots of pictures and stories on my instagram (timnasium), and have been meaning to transfer them over here so as to actual host my content on my own page. But I haven’t yet. But that’s not what I’m procrastinating on. My avoidance is of finishing up the outline for my new book. I know what I want to do, and what I need to do, but I’ve been lethargic lately. Bangkok is tiring. The Big Mango is like New York City on meth, and it can be exhausting just walking out the front door. You fuck up and forget to look six ways, and you could get clipped by a scooter before your first footstep settles onto the sidewalk. Those fuckers are fun, though.

I took a motorcycle taxi home from a bar the other night. I wasn’t planning on it, but the taxi pricing was out of control. Taxis in the tourist/popular areas refuse to turn their meters on for tourists/white people, instead quoting a ridiculous price which you can negotiate, but who wants to drunkenly negotiate at 2am to get home? Not me. So instead I wandered, weaving between the ladyboys offering late-night tuggers and the children selling gum and the Muslim women covered head to toe except for their eyes (when I see them, I always think frumpy ninjas). It was a diverse mix of people. I realized I had drifted into an Islamic neighborhood, which is always a treat, because that’s where you find the best kebabs. And I was just about to purchase one when a motorcycle taxi guy flanked me and asked, in pretty good English, if I needed a ride. I’d been meaning to try one out, but you have to know exactly where you’re going and how to go there because they are not touristy in the least, speak little English, and tend to be for locals only. But that also means you won’t get scammed with the white tax.

Side note: If you’re in a tourist or popular area here (or pretty much anywhere in SE Asia), you will be charged more if you’re white. Can you fuckin’ imagine the outrage if that happened in the U.S.? If all brown people were charged double or triple? And it isn’t secretive, either. They will hand you a separate menu with higher prices in restaurants, or there will be signs up in a shop with two different pricing structures. Then again, if you go to a touristy place in the U.S., everyone gets charged exorbitant prices, not just foreigners. So here pricing is racist, but back home everyone gets fucked.

Anyhow, I rode on the back of the dude’s scooter while we darted in between and around cars and trucks, conversing in English at the stoplights he decided to stop at (which was about half of them). He was a chill dude. I tried out some Thai on him, and he said my inflection was good, much like a local. I would have assumed he was being polite, but I was complimented three times this past weekend (check out the big swinging language dick on this guy), and so I believed him and thanked the guy. It was a great experience, and I’ll do it again for sure.

The coffee here is okay, but I’m addicted to Thai Ice Teas. I love them so much, and I’m drinking way too many. Any time I see a stand on the street, I pretty much have to buy one. Speaking of street food, it’s almost all we eat. We had grand illusions of taking cooking classes and making our own Thai food at home, but street food is cheaper than cooking at home, and far more delicious. I can’t get enough of it. We had friends in town last weekend, and they were skittish about trying anything. They don’t know what they’re missing. Sometimes it’s hard to order (especially soups, where there are different options for broth, meat, and noodles), but it’s so worth it. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to go back to a life without street food like we have here for about a buck fifty a meal.

I’m still in procrastination mode, so I’ll share that I recently battled the expat blues, and there is certainly a wash of loneliness that I’ve struggled with recently. My friends coming, oddly enough, made it worse before it got better. I think there is an existential facet to that as well. I have no idea where my life is going, and no clear idea of what happens next. It’s a lot to think about here, halfway around the world from most everything and everyone I know. What is my purpose; now, this year, this decade, ultimately? But make no mistake, I ask myself this regularly, and I figure answers will come with searching.

While I have been procrastinating here now with starting novel 3, I haven’t with finishing novel 2. That one is more or less completed. I’m happy with it, and waiting for feedback from a couple people I trust before giving it a final polish and sending it off to agents. I’ll leave you with the first part of the query letter I’ll be sending, since it provides a synopsis:

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Set within the strange and deranged, wonderful and whacked backdrop of the swamps of the sunshine state, Florida Men takes the reader on a journey through the counter culture of tent revivals, trailer park hustlers, gator poaching, organized crime, and good ol’ fashioned black-market butt injections.

My book follows the intertwined misadventures of three main characters.

• Pastor John – an increasingly delusional pill-addicted tent evangelist trying to balance his genuine desire to spread God’s word with his side job as a heroin trafficker.
• Dirty Luke – a born-to-lose small town grifter whose life slips from bad to worse when he finds himself in possession of a bag containing money and severed hands.
• Los – a young Miami gangster gradually losing himself to the realities of the fucked up world he chose to be a part of while struggling to meet the approval of his eccentric boss.