Restless in the dewy grass of the hard ground, he was asleep. His dreams registered what, numb, he hadn't comprehended so well the previous evening. His brain rehashed those images surreal and slow: Vanont slipping them a thousand baht; the decision on the sidewalk to go to the whores; Kumpee saying that he, Jatupon, was a ladyboy and couldn't go with them as if he had wanted to go with them (He might have wanted to go but not with them and not with that thousand baht); his numb malevolent smile at their laughter; being handed some loose change to go home with; and then getting on a bus randomly, handing the ticket tearer ten baht and pretending to be mute and dumb when asked his destination since there was none. He hadn't even said goodbye to his brothers and all of those years together. He just contemptuously smiled at their contempt and disappeared. One day he would be in America. In time, he told himself, in time. Being the cockroach had passed in time. He had lived in the world as that of an insect all those years. These family members didn't even have to ferret out his miserable little existence to stomp on him daily. It hadn't been much of a sport just to see him scurry around in the same space within his pain and yet it had been their main preoccupation. Bad as it was, it had passed without the necessity to kill himself. He just said to himself that it would pass and it had. He was no ladyboy. Maybe his serious intensity made his limbs rigid and his movements circumspect and gauche. Maybe it was strange that he rarely walked with his brothers but instead walked behind them. Undoubtedly he had been the sexual recipient. Still that didn't make him into a ladyboy nor did it make him gay. He was liberated. He was a changing creation. Past actions did not have to define him. The word, ladyboy, for once did not hurt him deeply since he was undergoing the metamorphosis of manhood. Manhood was indefinable since it could be anything one slipped off and slipped on at will during times that were critical junctures, as he knew this was. If he were to go back to Kazem or scurry over to the senator so begrudging innate inclinations to help him, he would be a man but a dependent one with childish yearnings to be shaped by others. He told himself he would smell like the fetid one, he would let the sagging elasticity completely peel off his underwear embarrassingly, and he would eat stray cats in the park but he would not sacrifice his newly discovered integrity for the sake of comfort. In the early light of morning he woke up with maximum determination despite the lack of solid sleep and seeing that his new home was on the outskirts of a park. It was a grassy fringe that went behind the wall and gate that enclosed the actual park. The sprinkling of rain was falling onto him and he could smell the stink of his damp shirt as if the metamorphosis to manhood had made him into the fetid one. Behind the wall he heard the squeaking chains of empty swings being moved slowly in the wind. Cars that infrequently passed the park were unreal and eerie as descending ghosts. No sooner had he awakened than a middle-aged woman in a red jacket rode up beside him on her bicycle. "Fortune teller?" she asked. "No," said Jatupon. "Don't you want your fortune read?" "No," he said. He knew he didn't have one. "I teach English too." "No," said Jatupon. "I don't have anything for you." "Here. Give this to someone who needs it." She gave him a business card that was nothing but a sliver of paper with a computer printed, reduced, and photocopied message of Thai on one side and English on the other. In her palm she had a whole stack of these tiny square bits of paper. As she rode away he read the English. "Nattanat near Lumpini Park. (13:00-21:00) Office 3761/296 soi Yudee 9 Chan Road Tambon Bangko, Kate Bangkolaem, BKK 10120 Thailand. Tel.02-673-1436 Time call 04.00 AM or after 10.00 PM Fortune Teller: I give you many gifts I am teacher English teacher/ Thai language Ride big bicycle." She was one of the lucky ones. Occasionally she probably was able to find a foreigner who wanted to learn Thai and each day she was able to give some fortunes that allowed her to have her own little room and a telephone. Thin as she was, she was able to live even if, in part, she had to seek clients in the beggars themselves. He waited around for the park to open. Slipping into numbness with nothing industrious to do, his integrity was shaken. He didn't want to be here. He could still go back to Kazem, he told himself.