"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me."  So my grandmother used to say.  Maybe I was five years old when she first taught me this, and maybe I was upset because some kid at the Lion's Club day camp on the South Side of Chicago had called me a "skinny little pansy".  Next day the diminutive brute called me a "sissy" and I repeated my grandmother's words of wisdom.  The kid said,  "Oh yeah?" and then he hit me over the head with a stick.

Now, forty years later, my Lion's Club day camp tormentor is probably a Marine drill instructor on Parris Island.  Got to be grateful for that.  My grandmother, if there is a heaven, is there.  I, in the meantime, am living on an island in the gulf of Siam that more resembles what one might imagine heaven to be like than it does a basic training camp for men of war.  I live in a bungalow along a tropical beach on the outskirts of a Thai village called Bophut.  It is a small village; too small for a guy with a big mouth.  The guy's name is Peter.  He is a professional drunk here on a two month drinking spree - visiting drunk in residence you might say.  We met at the Kiwi bar in the village.  The bar is officially known as Samui Magic, but it is run by three likeable young lads from New Zealand so locals refer to it as the Kiwi bar.  Basically, it is an outdoor saloon just off the beach.  You can order what they call pizza, but you got to be pretty drunk to mistake it for anything other than stale cheese and rotten tomatoes, carbonized on a cardboard crust.  The place is a hangout for resident ex-pats that have long since retired from whatever productive endeavors enabled them to settle in Bophut.  They now spend much of their money and most of their brain cells drinking at the Kiwi bar.  One of these characters is named Brian.  He is a sixty-five-year-old Aussie who purports to be a writer. I asked him once what he wrote and he said he could not tell me.

"Well, is it fiction or non-fiction?" I asked.

"Sorry.  I'd rather not say if you don't mind."

"I don't mind, Brian.  Just curious."

"Everybody is curious about it.  I prefer that it remain a mystery, if you know what I mean."

Frankly, I did not know what he meant and I did not really care either.  He has read quite a few books and we have talked about various authors.  We both like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry Miller.

"Miller dipped his quill into the blood and guts of a vibrant, vagabond world," said Brian. "He wrote with his penis, but he did so brilliantly.  Nobody writes like that these days."

"These days a guy has to be a bit more careful 'bout dippin' his penis into stuff like that.  You can get a nasty rash or worse.  Better to wear a condom, at least."

"It's not the same."

"It's safer."

"It's boring.  Sex with a condom, writing with a condom--same thing. Gilded though heartless passions, an erection of no consequence - a farce."

"You write with a condom, Brian?"

"I'd rather... "

"... Not say?"

"I'd rather have another scotch."

I like some of Evelyn Waugh and virtually all of P.G. Wodehouse.  Brian likes all of Evelyn Waugh and thinks P.G. Wodehouse was an elitist, pandering cad who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.  I said Plum was living in America during World War Two and Brian said no, he was living in Vichy, France.  We don't talk about P.G Wodehouse anymore.

One night Brian said that I must meet this Aussie, Peter.  "He'll get a kick out of you."  And that was probably as prophetic, albeit unknowingly, as Brian has ever been in his life.  "Peter is a radical left wing labor unionist," I was forewarned.

So I met Peter.  We had a brief ten-minute conversation during which he spoke for nine minutes.  "Capitalism is the death knell of society," he said.  "International business conglomerates are crushing the life out of the common laborer.  The profit motive is responsible for massive unemployment and just plain old general misery.  The hope of mankind lies in the hands of enlightened centralized government."

"Like the Soviet Union?"  I asked.

"They lost their way," he said.  "Levi's blue jeans and American movies corrupted the noble principles upon which the Marxist vision of an honest and viable society is founded."

"Levi's blue jeans and American movies did not purposely and maliciously create a famine in the early 1930's that led to the deaths of millions of Russian men, women and children.  Stalin did that."

"That's biased speculation."

"Actually, it's pretty well documented, but go to the Ukraine, count the gravestones and tell those who still remember that it's biased speculation.'

"Capitalism, Reaganism—they are the rot of the world!"

"Have another drink, Peter," I said.  "The veins in your neck are throbbing."

So he oozed off to the end of the bar, sat down next to Brian, ordered another beer and sulked like a child whose mommy had just taken its rattle away.

That was pretty much the extent of any conversation I have had with Peter and yet I understand that he has since been referring to me as a fascist.  "An ultra right fascist" as he put it to a friend of mine.  That does not really bother me.  The guy does not know me, and he probably could not come up with five cents worth of a valid definition about fascism any way.  He might just as well have called me a Nazi.  It is curiously ironic that borderline totalitarian types tend to use the terms fascist and Nazi when reacting to anybody who happens to disagree with them.  They resort to this sort of name calling whenever the weight of their arguments fail to persuade free thinking, educated people that centralized government is the solution to society's problems.  Consequently they resort to it quite often.

What can you do when somebody unjustly calls you a fascist or a Nazi? 

Deny it, of course.  But that is usually not good enough.  It reminds one of the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch trials.  Float a malicious rumor about someone and challenge him or her to exonerate themselves in a public forum.  It's just a scam.  Stalin and Hitler used the same tactics against those who opposed their evil schemes.  Again the irony looms with regard to Peter.  It is not big brother so much as it is all the benighted little brothers that allow for the havoc of totalitarian regimes.  A leader does not necessarily need brains or principles or morals or money.  All he needs is followers; and the greatness of a leader should be determined by the moral and mindful character of those who follow him.

What am I doing - moralizing?  My God, is there anything more tedious than that.  And as Wilde said, "A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite."  So now I am a hypocrite as well as a fascist.  How low can a man get?  Well I could end up doing two years of hard labor in a joint called Reading Gaol, or I could be further slandered by the accusation of being Thai-phobic.  "Peter says you hate Thai people," reported a friend.  That's just great! I live in Thailand, I am surrounded by Thais, and Thais are not the sort to take kindly to someone they think hates them.  You could say Thais are funny that way, or you could say they are just like any other nationality.

Damn it!  If only Peter was twenty years younger - or thirty years younger and a karate expert.  I would not care.  A big stick and a handful of rocks and... "There is in truth no greater silliness, none more enduring, than to be provoked and enraged by the silliness of this world - and there is none more bizarre... it makes you principally irritated with yourself."

Merci Monsieur Montaigne.  You are absolutely correct.  I have allowed myself to be provoked and enraged by the silliness of this world.  Peter is a feeble-minded socialist, an embittered rumormonger.  Gosh, this is irritating! He is an alcoholic ne'er-do-well, a social miscreant and a misfit to boot.  Hell, he's an asshole!  Did I say this was irritating? He is also short, has a bilious complexion and a bulbous nose, rotting brown teeth, rancid breath, beady bloodshot eyes and... and black, cable thick hairs sprouting from the fetid caverns of his left ear.  Good God, he is an odious specimen and I am suddenly feeling a lot better about the whole affair.  Call me a fascist, will you? Ha!

Well, enough of this silliness.  I am going to drink a couple of scotch and sodas, eat a piece of raw meat, and go to bed and dream about my grandmother.  She also advised that I should always carry a nice shiny dime in my pocket.  Then whenever someone was speaking nonsense, I should reach into my pocket, offer them the coin and suggest they phone somebody who gives a damn.  That was the only time I heard her use the word "damn".

           It is a pity that wise old people die too soon, not to mention the fact that phone calls now cost fifty cents.