Strawberry Fanta
By Alex Mason
In a strangely normal room on the outskirts of Bangkok, I am told to sit and wait. On the coffee table is a black book called The Thai Occult. Across the room is a red curtain, behind which a voice chants softly in Sanskrit.
I busy my nerves with the book, flip through photographs of dingy, earthen sanctums dripping with candles, walls crowded with framed monks, rooms antithetical to the one I am currently sat in, which rather resembles the waiting room of a third-rate plastic surgeon.
Behind the red curtain, something growls. Wait, what? I look up from the book, try using X-ray vision. The other voice continues its chanting, unfazed. The dead words are uttered in a way that is both detached and intimate, like bad news given in a hospital. I go back to the book, leg bouncing unwittingly.
I read about how knowledge of the occult is disappearing from Thailand. Ajahns cannot find disciples to carry on the traditions, and when they die their families often burn the books and charts and artifacts.
I look at drawings of contorted animals pierced by arrows pointing to words written in languages I do not understand. I try and read the English captions but my mind keeps skipping—behind the curtain, things are getting worse. The growls have graduated to snarls. Loud, uninhibited snarls. I’m pretty sure they’re coming from a human.
I feel secondhand embarrassment. I mean, really, have some composure!
A howl.
This is ridiculous. I’m not scared, but this is getting ridiculous.
I put down the book and mosey over to the curtain, but still can’t see anything from an acute angle. I pick up a new book, a binder of yantras covered in “no photography” symbols. It seems that the Ajahns guard their secrets closely.
The chanting stops, and the other voice bursts into maniacal laughter. I’ve never heard laughter like that.
This is ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I’ll just go, in fact. I close the book, try and think up an excuse, but as I stand the curtain rips back and a man poses triumphantly, bare chest puffed, metaphorical steam wafting off his bald head. He struts outside, pays me no mind. When I look back towards the curtain there’s a woman, beckoning me inside. I take a deep breath.
Before we get too far down this rabbit hole, let me get one thing straight—I’m an atheist. Baptized a Catholic in my grandma’s sink, my soul’s been saved, but I’ve no use for it.
I don’t believe in free will, or the fundamental goodness of humanity, or much of anything at all. I spent my youth tattooing my sacred body with stupid shit—logos from whiskey bottles and designer fashion houses, junk food mascots abusing drugs, random shit from Spongebob. The marks of a nihilist.
My friends are all astrologers. Meaning is latent in everything around them, interwoven with the patterned stars. Their lives brim and boil over with meaning, and it is their religion to find it, to read the patterns. I try and argue with them, but they’re too busy having fun. Lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe I’m just jealous. Maybe it’s time I try and find some meaning of my own. That’s why I’m here, in this strangely normal room on the outskirts of Bangkok.
Behind the red curtain, Ajahn Wirat sits up on his bench, cleaning a long needle. He’s surrounded by Ruesi masks, and the red carpet beneath him is ink-stained. He motions for me to take off my shirt and come sit on a little stool below him. I sit down and hand up my offering of candles, incense, Thai white whiskey, a pack of his favorite cigarettes (LM greens), and 100 baht in cash. He takes it and sets it aside and turns me around and pokes ancient symbols into my back with his long needle as his assistant pulls my skin taut.
When he’s done he puts some gold leaf on the tattoo. He spins me back around and sprinkles me with blessed water, like I’m a possessed house plant. Then he puts a Ruesi mask on my head and begins chanting. I don’t know if I’m supposed to growl, or whatever. I don’t feel like growling. I don’t feel much of anything.
The yant looks like five jagged lines down my shoulder blade—a claw mark. It’s the same tattoo that Angelina Jolie got while filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia, the tattoo that popularized Sak Yant in the West, that caused “Bamboo Tattoo” shops to sprout up all over Thailand, selling knock-off designs to tourists—holy objects divorced from ritual like an undrunk chalice of Precious Blood.
I’m not like these tourists. Superior, in fact; I paid extra for the real thing—a real ceremony with a real Ajahn, and all the bells and whistles. My yant is not some cheap memento of a good time; it’s a bonafide rune, a magical diagram that will guide me to happiness and spiritual fulfillment.
Each line of the yant is a charm. One line nullifies any curses that have been put upon me. Another protects against bad horoscope constellations. The fifth line is a spell meant to increase charisma, making me more attractive in the eyes of others. An Italian lover with the same starter yant warned me that this fifth line kindles attraction from the opposite sex, specifically. He advised me to inform the Ajahn about my same-sex proclivities and have the chant adjusted accordingly, lest I suffer the unwelcome advances of women. However, in email correspondence in the weeks leading up to my appointment, I was told not to worry—the spell is not gender-specific. They had no idea what my lover’s Ajahn was on about. When I texted him about this discrepancy he left me on read. That was the last time we talked.
Several scours of the internet turned up nothing; translations of ancient and esoteric Buddhist spells are not exactly search-engine-optimized. I did find one comment in an obscure chatroom claiming that the fifth line of the yant reads as “Metta Maha Niyom/Sanee,” which translates to charisma/popularity in a general sense, but I found nothing about the chants themselves.
In the week leading up to my tattoo appointment I learned that the symbols are abbreviations of Pali syllables written using the Khom alphabet. Khom itself is an altered version of an ancient Khmer script used to write the Thai language (“Khom” is the Thai word for the Khmer people). The Ruesi mask I wore during the ceremony comes from a Thai hermit tradition called the Lersi. Then, because all of that isn’t confusing enough, Ajahn Wirat went ahead and blessed the whole mess using Sanskrit. To extract clarity and meaning from this entanglement of dead, alive, and barely breathing languages would require several doctorate degrees along with a big bottle of aspirin.
For days my thumb scrolled across centuries and civilizations, from the Lanna tradition in Chiang Mai to the Khmer tradition in Angkor. I learned that Sak Yant is older than Buddhism itself, that the role of Ajahn is passed down through families, each lineage preserving its own unique understanding of the tradition, an understanding that undoubtedly chips and changes with each passing generation—the eternal game of telephone that we call “knowledge.” It’s possible that my lover’s Ajahn and Ajahn Wirat performed two completely different ceremonies—one gender-specific and one gender-neutral. It’s also possible that one of us was scammed. My guess is that at some point somebody simply translated ‘charisma/popularity’ to ‘charisma/popularity with the opposite sex,’ and that any confusion can be chalked up to this assumed heterosexuality. Still, the uncertainty bugs the crap out of me. I wish I could raise a hand into the knotted web of history and pull it all into neat, taut lines.
I still decided to get the tattoo, of course. Because none of this really matters. Because magic isn’t real.
Wait, no. That’s not the right attitude. Speeding back into Bangkok on the motorbike, I try and conjure up something, anything. But, like birthdays and new years, I don’t feel any different. My pineal gland still feels calcified, my veins still empty of the electric bloodrush of a spiritual awakening.
The powers of the tattoo are contingent upon adherence to The Five Precepts followed by all good Buddhists—no stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, killing, or heavy drinking.
I’m not a thief, but now have this paranoid fear of becoming one.
In 7-Eleven I stare at chilled drinks, trying hard not to accidentally steal something. Strawberry Fanta is popular here, but not amongst the living. Grievers and devotees leave the bottles in front of graves and shrines, plastic straws bent so that ghosts may drink. It’s something to do with the color; I guess the dead have a craving for red things. I think about The Coca-Cola Company, producing all this Strawberry Fanta, a soda that nobody actually drinks, a soda that is, frankly, disgusting, but they have to keep producing it, and 7-Eleven has to keep stocking it, is forced to give up valuable refrigerator real-estate to keep all this disgusting soda chilled for the ghosts, to satisfy this endlessly wasteful craving, a craving so powerful that Thailand is Fanta’s fourth largest market, ahead of China and the United States. It’s funny—if you don’t believe in ghosts.
My visa is expiring soon, so I make sure to pay for my Coke, grab my stuff from the hostel, and hop on a flight to Vietnam.
In Da Nang I crawl into a coffee-colored coffin and wait for the magic to come. I avoid talking with people, lest a lie slip out in conversation. Plus, talking with people usually leads to drinking with people, and drinking leads to more drinking, and more lies. I lie a lot, not sure why. Wait, that’s a lie. I know why, in fact—I lie to appear interesting. I exaggerate stories to hide my boring personality.
Shit, maybe the yant on my shoulder blade is just another lie, an attempt to purchase meaning for my shallow existence, to present myself as a deep and profound person. Maybe this spiritual quest that I’m on is nothing more than a base attempt to feel whole, to feel good. I yearn for the security and comfort of the believer; nihilism is a cold and unrequited religion.
My phone assures me that “sexual misconduct” refers to things like cheating and raping, not sodomy. The Theravada Buddha doesn’t give a shit about my queer mind, so we’re all good there. However, some Tibetan Buddhist scholars do consider homosexuality to be a violation of the precept. I try and ignore the cognitive dissonance this fun little fact gives me, the idea that my newfound moral foundation is subject to something as arbitrary as geography. I swallow it all down like a big pill. This tattoo isn’t good for my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Whatever, as long as I don’t ever step foot in Tibet I should be fine.
When I get hungry I tiptoe outside like a deer. Da Nang flows around me. I try and ascertain if any specific gender is eyeing me up, but nobody seems to be paying me any mind. I don’t feel charismatic/popular. I just feel lonely.
I yield to the spiders, crawling across the sidewalk. Does involuntary manslaughter still count as a killing? Maybe it’s best not to watch where I’m stepping—out of sight, out of mind. Does brushing teeth kill bacteria?
I approach everything delicately, second-guessing every move. I sway back and forth in front of a bar, but fuck it, I need a drink. Sipping a Saigon, I do more research on the definition of “heavy drinking.” I want an exact number; my Catholic roots crave black and white answers, but Buddhism is a grey religion.
Thich Nhat Hanh says we shouldn’t take things so literally. We must think about what the Buddha was trying to accomplish when he wrote The Five Precepts, and give him the benefit of the doubt. For example, we might be following the precept against killing, but do we speak out against the killings committed by others? Do we boycott the production, the industries of death? We might drink in moderation, but there are many addictions in our modern world, addictions that the Buddha could never have foreseen. There’s nothing in the Āgama about social media, but does this technicality let us off the hook?
I delete Instagram from my phone.
I can feel things start to slip. I feel shitty for being gay—an old feeling I thought was long gone. I feel shitty for wanting to drink, but when I feel shitty I usually solve it by drinking. The threat of insects irritates; I am scared to itch my own skin. My balm is increasingly fervid internet research which causes new sores of doubt to open. I stumble around like a jumbled knot tightening with each erratic attempt to loosen itself.
A couple of days later I find and download an electronic copy of The Thai Occult, that little black book that was lying on the coffee table in Ajahn Wirat’s waiting room. I read a passage warning not to choose the yant based solely on the beauty of its design, as some yants can “bring chaos to life” if the bearer does not know how to follow the rules. Having done precisely what the book warns against, and having finally started to grasp the danger in making the permanent decision to inscribe my flesh with an ancient symbology I neither appreciated nor understood, the idea that my yant has cursed me starts to bubble up.
Just above me, to the north, Typhoon No. 3 rips through the Red River Delta. Entire towns disappear forever in the wind and water. It’s the strongest storm in 70 years to hit the battered coast known as “Vietnam.”
Selfishly, I try and find ways to fold the events into my personal narrative. What does this mean for me? My inner turmoil has seemingly escaped my body and manifested as a great spinning devil, and 844 people were dead. God whispers that this is somehow all my fault, and the Buddha shrugs.
A week later, my neuroses and I board a bus north, to Hanoi. I spend the next six hours gazing at wreckage and playing this fun little game called “What If?” What if this bus crashes? What if there’s another typhoon? What if my free spirit is forever shackled by this gnawing, debilitating doubt? When we arrive in the soaked capital it’s 2 AM and I’m starving. Also, there’s been some mistake with my reservation—the hostel is overbooked. The receptionist smiles sheepishly and calls his friend to drive me somewhere. A mosquito lands on my shoulder but I pull my punch at the last second. The pardoned bug buzzes off.
I pile my shit onto the receptionist’s friend’s motorbike, too hungry/tired to gauge the safety of my situation. He maneuvers around fallen tree limbs to a mint-colored cafe, leads me upstairs to a room with a bunk bed. There’s a tall Russian in the bottom bunk, grumbling about the lights. I shuck my shit and hoist it onto the top bunk. The receptionist’s friend smiles at my haggard face and asks if I’ve eaten dinner. I lie and say yes, and only later realize what I’ve done.
When I’m sure that the receptionist’s friend is gone I sneak out in search of food. I swear I can feel the yant burning on my back, feel its power seep out of me like sweat. Weeks of research and anxiety down the drain.
Why did I lie? I had not eaten dinner—was starving, in fact, but had lied and refused food from this kind stranger. Now I’m left wandering hungry through the shuttered, flooded streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter with no magic powers, no moral foundation, with futility creeping back in like intrusive thoughts of texting a toxic ex. The lie felt like a reflex conditioned through the past couple weeks—the repeated dodging of social interactions out of fear of breaking precept. Ironic that this fear is what ultimately led to my inevitable breaking point.
The tattoo on my shoulder blade is now no different from the fake yants sold to drunk tourists in Phuket and Ko Pha Ngan. I’m no different.
To be honest, I feel relieved. My quest for meaning, or God, or whatever it was I was searching for is over. All I found was doubt, growling in some dingy corner of my mind. However, as soon as I broke precept, the growling stopped. Maybe the curse has finally been broken. Maybe I was never cursed in the first place.
Here’s where I’m supposed to share something I learned, to show how I’ve changed. But, like birthdays and new years, I don’t feel any different (except maybe a newfound appreciation for lying and heavy drinking). I’m still a nihilist, albeit a slightly less confident one. Maybe this essay is a last-ditch effort to ascribe some sort of meaning to my experience, to find a story where there isn’t one.
Back home in Bangkok, I notice something strange. Some of the Strawberry Fanta bottles in the shrines around my neighborhood look half-drunk. Probably birds, or some other animal. But then wouldn’t they be knocked over? I don’t believe in ghosts, I remind myself. But really, what do I know? Like I said—it’s hard for me to believe in anything. But I’m trying. Lord, I am trying.
Alex Mason (he/him) lives with his grandmother in Minneapolis, MN. He spends his time staring out windows, speed-walking around frozen lakes, and worrying about the weight of a hefty tuxedo cat named Clovis. This is his first publication.
Artwork Source: Textile sample, Unknown Designer. Manufactured by J. Claude Frères & Co. From the Public Domain.
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