Things did not get off to the most pleasant start around Hotel California.  I was awoken by a horrendous noise.  It was more of a rumble, and repeated series of low vibrations that one feels more than hears.  I did what I could to ignore it and try to go back to sleep, but the rumble was just too much.  Frustratedly furious and alarmingly naked, I burst out into the landing to find and destroy the source of this egregious rudeness.  I had already kicked the thing down the stairs before my still-asleep mind processed that it was probably a small Cambodian child and that given that, my reaction may have been a bit over the top.  But I don’t know that there really is such thing as an overreaction when it comes to being inordinately woken up. Anyway, whatever the hell it was, it got kicked the hell down the stairs.   After all the bumping and thudding ended, there was nothing but silence.  My knowledge of the Khmer language is limited to the single interrogative phrase “How do I get to the nude beach?” which, according to Bong, my fixer the last time I was in Cambodia, goes something like, “Tae khnhom tow chhner akrat daoy rbiebnea?”  There was no reply.  Perhaps the child had not been Cambodian.  There could, of course, have been an issue with my pronunciation. But I began to doubt it was a child at all.  I didn’t have either contexts in or glasses on…it could have a been a Cambodian child, but it could have also been a medium-sized dog, or one of those wild turkeys that’s always running around The Creek demanding food as baksheesh to avoid avian sexual assault.  I guess we’ll never know.

The moral of this story is don’t wake Jayson (or any other adult) up ever. And also don’t let your kids, Cambodian or otherwise, play on the goddamn stairs.

N.P.: “Sex on Wheelz” – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult