Story Settings
Many of my short stories involve tourists who find themselves in places that make them feel vulnerable. "Almost Paradise" started as a creative nonfiction piece that won an honorable mention in the Isak Dinesen Creative Nonfiction Contest, but I loved the setting so much, I started to think about what kind of character would feel maximum discomfort. Having been in Thailand myself, I knew that Thais often turned around and walked backwards in order to stare at a foreigner, and I thought "who better to put here than a traveler already self-conscious about his face."
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Almost Paradise
JAMMED IN the back of a Datsun pickup between bags of rice and farmers with live chickens, I was kind of wishing I had never come on this trip to Thailand. In Bangkok, Thais had actually walked backwards to prolong their view of my face, and when my cousin Nico and I stopped in a temple for a cheap massage, the masseuse refused to touch my back, even though I don’t have a birthmark there. Now, Nico was taking me to a backpackers’ resort down by the Cambodian border. A woman moved her feet to keep from touching mine, and, with a tight mouth, whipped angrily at the humid air with a paper fan. Her little girl, squirming and tugging her mother’s dress, kept looking at me. Nico was supposed to be running interference so this shit didn’t happen, but his eyes were closed and his head was jerking back and forth like one of those dashboard bobble-dolls.
(Click the link below to read the rest of the story.)
(Click the link below to read the rest of the story.)