12.30 Ice Cream and Due Diligence

Musicians practice for hours a day to perfect their craft. Dancers rehearse their routines countless times to have their steps as familiar as taking a breath. Actors try to be chameleons with their personality, changing colors as their scripts force them to manifest themselves into someone other than their ordinary selves. But when an ice cream salesman on the beach in Thailand becomes all at once a musician, a dancer and an actor, with no inspiration besides fattening his pocket, the results are usually subpar to say the least. However, today was the exception.

While on the beach I composed an emotionally intense letter to a friend. After its composition I read it again twice, fixing the large errors and chalking up the small ones to the spontaneous nature of its inspiration, and after I put the letter away. As soon as my hands closed my journal, a figure appeared out of the corner of my left eye.

“Do – you - want - ice - cream??!!” The figure sang aloud, bending his knees and raising his arms as if he was taking a bow to conclude the greatest performance of his life.

The tone of his question, the divine timing of his humor bringing me out of the swamps of my emotions, and the huge smile smeared across this Thai’s face, made his proposal all at once the perfect act and an irresistible offer. How could I say no??

Laughing uncontrollably at his audacity, I asked him for the cheapest ice cream he could offer up. Finding the fruit flavored popsicles at the bottom of his portable chest, I realized I’d left my wallet in the hotel room, unable to give him the exorbitant 50 baht that he requested. Explaining the situation, he smiled at me and said, “I give you and you pay later. I come back.” Further gaining my trust with a handshake that said, “No worries man,” he left and tried to work his magic on the other farang lounging on the Samui sand.

About 20 minutes passed before Gift and I decided to leave the beach in search of some lunch. With no sign of the ice cream salesman and my conscious telling me I needed to pay this guy before I forgot, I set out in search of the boisterous ice cream man in the Boston Red Sox shirt. I told Gift I’d just be a few minutes and left her at the hotel, beginning to scan the beach to pay my debt.

I saw many vendors selling grilled corn, hot dogs, beach toys and necklaces, but my baseball fan-ice cream man was nowhere in sight. I continued walking, passing the beachside bars with the Happy Hour specials, the black British couple enjoying their salad at a table on the beach, the Korean couple who looked like a portrait that could be captioned as “happiness,” and the American business man whose skin turned as red as the Chinese flag when he wasn’t busy ruling the world. I passed the ragged stray dogs that call the beach their home, always with a curious confusion plastered on their faces that made me think they were old Samui souls asking themselves, “What the fuck happened here?” I walked by the Thai masseuses who questioned in their high-pitched voices, “Hello!! You want massage? Hello!” all the while wondering if they would like to wear gloves while they massaged so many greasy, smelly white bodies. I saw the pack of vendors gambling in the shade, putting the money they’d just earned onto the tree stump, aka the makeshift card table, that either got them laid by their girlfriends or forced their children to go without food for an evening. I strolled by the beach volleyball net that no one was using, the juice stand playing bad Buddha Bar music, and the wax-chested gays with no sign of my ice cream man.

Almost half an hour had passed and the sweat on my brow told me that this was the hardest I would ever work to give someone money. I began to question other vendors I found, asking if they knew where the crazy ice cream man was. All of them said yes and pointed in the same direction, the one I was heading away from the hotel.

I finally found the guy with a farang girl, enjoying a cigarette during a respite from his antics. Looking back on it I probably messed up his game with this chica, but I was in such a relief to finally see his face with the sinister smile that I walked straight up to him and handed him his money.

When he recognized who I was, he said nothing, but looked directly back where I’d come from with the expression, “Damn, this farang is crazy.” And that was it.

With my pride satisfied that I’d completed the promised task, and my internal clock telling me I needed to get back to Gift before she started calling the police, I picked up the pace of my walking.

I again passed the Koreans, the Brits, the hot dogs and the Buddha Bar music, with the bridge of my feet burning with each step in the afternoon sand. Realizing that I was still ages away from the hotel, I took off my sandals and began to run. This heightened pace didn’t give me time to respond to the massage requests or to see which of the vendors’ karma had been aligned on this Wednesday, and I saw my due diligence was quickly turning into idiot compassion. With my breath becoming more weighted I saw the sign for our hotel, and Gift sitting outside, waiting patiently with a smile on her face.

Almost an hour had passed since I embarked on my “quick trip” and she was dying laughing as I ran to her chair, sweat dripping from every pore of my body and my breath as short as a Speedo.

I explained the situation to her and she laughed all the way to lunch, where I quickly chugged the first bottle of water I could get my hands on.

If I ever questioned that great performances can inspire even more epic (some would call stupid) ones, the ice cream man, his charm and my voyage through the sand removed all of my doubts.