The summer following my second year of law school I returned to Bangkok.  The school year had gone by pretty quickly, mostly because I had been planning for the summer.  Planning for the summer included taking a Thai-language course via an adult education community program in San Francisco.

I had wanted to return to Thailand over my winter break.  I had met plenty of people the prior summer that I would have had a good time, and probably some work.  My plans to return in the winter did not involve my husband, however.  By the fall the Ex had moved up to San Francisco from LA and got a job.  Also, we couldn’t afford for both of us to go.  If I had gone over winter the Ex and I surely would have broken up – seven years before we finally did.

It was some time in the fall that the Ex found a picture of the guy I’d spent all my time with the two weeks after he left.  This was back before most anyone had digital cameras.  I had borrowed a friend’s 35mm camera and had taken a lot of photos over the summer.  The friend ended up dying; I still have the camera.

The Ex found the picture and got all sorts of angry and hurt.  He tore up the picture (which was foreshadowing of what he’d do to pictures of him and me after he caught me cheating seven years in the future) and scratched out the guy’s face in the negative.  You see, kids, cameras used to have film, from which negatives would be developed and prints would be made.

I found out that he found the damming evidence when I came home from one of my Tuesday night Thai-language courses.  He was upset and stayed, just a block away near the Great American Music Hall, with Jesús.  [Really, if you've not yet read "Smooth as Silk," about my first summer in Bangkok, you might be a little confused as to the cast of characters.  Go read it, it's pretty good.]

I remember feeling sorry he was hurt for seeing the photo, and feeling angry that he’d destroyed the photo of a guy with whom I’d had a lot of fun.  I also remember feeling like he was making a big deal out of little; I had come home to him, hadn’t I?  I could certainly love him and fuck other people, only I didn’t know it myself, and didn’t have either the self-awareness or the balls to tell him that.

After a few days of debauchery with Jesús the Ex came home.  In order to get him to do so I had to promise not to go to Bangkok over winter break and to start therapy.  I’m sure if “sex addiction” existed at the time I would have been accused of having one.  If he only knew ….

Throughout the school year I had to assure the Ex that I would not cheat on him again if I returned to Thailand in the summer.

During the school year I sent a number of letters of inquiry to law firms in Bangkok that had international business practices and that wanted to cater to English-speaking clients.  Technically non-Thais cannot practice law in Thailand.  However, since the Thai definition of “practicing law” is very narrow – arguing a case in court in Thai – it mattered little that I was not yet a lawyer in the United States, as I could never be a lawyer in Thailand.  That I was American was a major boon.

A few firms were interested, but I finally settled on a small firm with a practice in Bangkok and Paris.  The major reason I chose the firm was because the job came with an apartment.  We had stayed very inexpensively at a shitty hotel the previous summer, but I liked the idea of having a kitchen of my own and not having to worry about nosy hotel personnel.

For my birthday in 2001, the Ex gave me a Coach umbrella.  He knew how the summer rains in Bangkok were, and had seen what can happen to an ass in the rain.  [If I've not yet told the story of the Bangkok rain's effect on my ass, I will.]  But it was (and is; I still have it) a full-sized umbrella, which wasn’t very practical for traveling.  A friend drove me and the umbrella to the airport.  At the curb I realized how unwieldy the umbrella was and I asked her to return it to the Ex for safe keeping.

I was off to work in Bangkok while the Ex worked in San Francisco.

[To be continued, for sure.]

I swear.  True story.