Kalaymyo, January 19, 2019
In a valley between two advancing massifs, they built a road they built a town: Kalaymyo at the crossroads of the cardinal lines, straight as a compass needle – to the north are the border of India, and inaccessible Himalayas.
Seated facing the boulevard that rumbles at the New Solar Myanmar, I drink lagers from the kegs. A mature man in a longyi, weathered face, unfolds a betel-nut smile: teeth reddened and rotted by the quid. For lack of words I toss him the names of cities, origins and destinations: Gangaw, Mandalay...
– Mandalay!
From inside his jacket he takes out a plastic bag, and from the bag a fat wad of bills – plump sum he has no fear of displaying, it seems, on the terrace of the New Solar Myanmar. He wants to show me the image on the ten-thousand-kyat note, the moats and the fortress of Mandalay. And he repeats:
– Mandalay! Mandalay!
A cry between his bleeding teeth.
No woman in the bar except the waitresses. Assembly of similar men who stupefy themselves one swallow at a time.
A guy comes to greet me and invites me to his table. With him and his friend I drain the kegs, I rinse my gullet with blond water. His name is David. He is Christian, he says, and tomorrow will go to mass.
– And you, you are Christian also, right?
– I don’t really have a religion.
– Really? It’s the first time I hear that... don’t have a religion.
In the smoke of the cheroots arrive the trans women. Band of resisters put under the ban of the town: punks of the law of gender. Some wear their hair long and the becoming dress, cultivate their woman nature. Others have short hair, scarves wound around the body, a warrior air. And it chatters, and it laughs. Gusts of cheap perfume travel all the way to my table.
– I pity them, says David with a pout of disgust, as if he were spitting his betel-tinted saliva.
– Some men here like them, right? I ask.
– Nobody wants them.
There is one, very feminine, who can’t stop looking at me. She strikes poses, twists her locks. I smile at her.
– You’re very handsome. You have a sweet smile.
– Thank you.
I feel closer to the trans women, in the end, than to these jaws that all chew the same nut. I might have let myself be bewitched, at the New Solar Myanmar in Kalaymyo, by a hair, a neckline, a soft word – were it not for that cheap perfume that crushes my temples.