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11:18 p.m. - Tuesday, Apr. 08, 2003
Angry Wood and Samantha
Working nights at an army depot, when he no doubt had better things to do, my father constructed a small remote-controlled airplane from balsa wood and the distinctive pastel green paint usually seen only on the walls of the bedrooms in government housing.

By remote control, I don�t mean the same thing you probably imagine. Radio controlled aircraft had not yet been invented. This was, after all, only the late nineteen fifties� the Pleistocene of my youth. This airplane was connected to its pilot with a plastic handle, by means of which a pair of strong but thin strings could be used to control the up or down movement of the tail rudders. The vertical stabilizer was fixed in a position that made the aircraft in flight tend to fly always slightly away from the pilot, who stood in the center of the circular flight path and spun around and around, holding the plastic handle and attempting to keep the plane flying level.

The contraption was powered by a loud and angry little one-cylinder engine, which screamed like midget hellfire once it had been started and had its needle-valve throttle adjusted to maximum.

For most of the time he owned it, my only involvement with my father�s plane was my responsibility to disconnect the Ray O Vac battery that provided heat for ignition until the engine began to run on it�s own after the pilot flipped the prop around with his (usually skinned and bruised) finger. Having moved the battery, I was then allowed to hold the plane on the asphalt of the church parking lot, feeling it straining against my fingers to begin its flight until my father had gotten to the control end of the string and nodded for me to let the plane go and get out of the way.

That may sound boring. If it does, it�s only because you don�t understand and I can�t adequately explain the secret thrill I got each week at what always turned out to be the last flight of the day, when my father, gaining some confidence in his piloting skills, would attempt to do �something fancy�. �Something fancy� was intended primarily to be a loop-de-loop, but most often resulted in a mind-dizzying climb and then a wild dive straight for the pilot�s head. Owing to his alertness and agility, the furious little monster never did actually hit my father, but it surely did make him throw down that plastic handle and dance in many directions. The sound of the screaming engine would stop abruptly with a kind of smacking, cracking sound as it made a respectable little pock mark in the sun-softened asphalt and instantaneously disassembled itself for easy transportability back to the government shop where it would be reborn like a wooden phoenix during the coming week of nights.

He was always in a bad mood on the drive home.

There came a time, however, when for his own reasons, he decided it might be appropriate to teach me to cut loose the surly bonds of earth.

I was probably always crazy, but I was never stupid. I had been watching him throughout his self-schooling. I fully expected that if I took the controls, I was sure to be the source of his bad mood on the way home this time. I had enough guilt already. I didn�t need this. So I developed my own flight plan.

By this time, the plane itself had morphed from mostly balsa, paint and glue into mostly glue and paint, with a little balsa here and there. I suppose the balsa was necessary to really get that good cracking sound when the plane rediscovered those surly bonds we spoke of. At any rate, my guess is that the plane was about depreciated out by the time I got my hands on it. I found this later to be true, when my dad turned up with a beautiful store-bought plastic plane, which I was never allowed to touch. But that�s a different story, and one which contains only one crash� albeit a really, really good one, with plastic bits flying so far in every direction that it was doubtful if even FBI forensics could ever recover enough material to reconstruct that event.

My plan was fool-proof. I would hold the plastic control handle as instructed, but I would never let the airplane have its head. What I mean is that, when my dad let go of the monster, I would simply swing it around on its string a little faster than it could fly. Centrifugal force should keep it where it belonged in spite of any self-destructive tendencies on its part.

In retrospect, I should have crashed it the first time. I think the old man was a little upset that a mere child could pilot the plane on her first try. But I didn�t. I spun that little sucker around so fast, it hadn�t a chance to do anything except scream and strain against the string. I saw nothing but the blur of landscape rushing past against the steady image of the airplane as I whirled it round and round in a furious circle, until the last drop of toxic fuel was spent from its tank.

Even then I didn�t stop twirling. I only slowed enough to allow the now silent machine to drift slowly down onto the tarmac for a perfect three point landing. My father was awe-struck. I was a born pilot who, incidentally, he never allowed to fly again.

I was reminded of all this on the night I met Samantha. I didn�t know until later that she had been agitating to see me, even while I was still in the hospital. She was in her own nearby room, recovering from her sex-reassignment surgery and had been told that I was sleeping, each time she asked if she could visit.

She didn�t get to me until I had been checked out of the hospital and moved back to the Mercure Hotel for a few days. I didn�t feel well at all. I felt I had been discharged too early, even though I was ecstatic to be away from there. I hadn�t slept much at all. I was in pain and I was feeling very scared because of the new war and the lack of control I was feeling over my world just then. So far, I wasn�t having any fun. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to cry. I wanted this to be over, and I wasn�t getting what I wanted at all.

The knock on the door was really just one more thing I didn�t want, but how could I say no? Wannee told me she had been asking to see me the whole time. So I opened the door to my room and peered out of my basketball-sized face, through watery, bleary eyes at the bubbly creature that flowed into my sanctuary.

She was a bit tall for a girl, but with one of the sweetest faces I�ve ever seen. The presence of her recently new vagina, I think, must have been partly responsible for the glowing skin on her face. Like a bride she was. And happy? You wouldn�t believe it.

I felt myself holding once again onto that old string, while she made the circuit of my room. She was too weak to stand and too sore to sit, so she spent the entire time rotating between a self-conscious reclining posture on my spare bed and standing fully upright while she informed me that:

�Hi! I�m Samantha and I�ve read your diary, three times actually, and I just had my surgery, and it�s so wonderful, and I�m really sore, but it�s so good to meet you I just had to see you because you�re an inspriation to me and you�re just soooo wonderful, and I love Dr Suporn, he�s a magician and my vagina is eight inches deep and he said he could only guarantee six and I�m from Ohio and I�m just so happy and I love Thailand well I better go and let you get some rest but first here�s a hug because you are my inspiration and are you coming down for breakfast in the morning, so maybe I�ll see you there and, well, I better go now, but I just wanted to see you. Goodbye now, and come knock on my door if you ever want to talk, here�s another hug� goodnight.�

And when the door closed again, I felt that same spinning, reeling feeling, as if I had just let go of the little buzzing airplane on a hot day a long time ago.

I didn�t tell her that in her breathless joy, she became the axis of my own trip to Chonburi. From the time she showed me that there are people out there who know me, even though I don�t know them, and who care for me, even though I�ve done nothing to deserve it, I felt good to be there, swelling, pain, bleary eyes and all. Samantha turned my trip around.

She reminded me of how I felt when I became the owner of my own newly corrected body. She brought back some of that same joy by mere association. I was happy for her at the same time I knew without being able to say so that there were still a few disconcerting, even scary days ahead as she began to take full possession.

We didn�t actually talk much after that. Although we passed through the same spaces over the next few days, our own activities seemed to keep us just this far apart. I didn�t get a chance to really thank her for seeking me out and rubbing up against my life. The few opportunities we had to talk, I did not use to thank her in so many words. But then I�m funny that way. I write here because I can�t speak in person. I forget the words, or I cry, or otherwise find some way to make the conversation clumsy.

But I know she reads my diary. If she�s reading this and I haven�t offended her with my slightly skewed version of her visit, then I can tell her now that I am glad to have met her. She did more for me than I ever could have done for her. She gave me a warm smile and a hug at the exact moment I most needed both.

Thank you Samantha from Ohio.

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