I left my socks behind
Under a large, external air conditioner that had collided with two heads in the previous half hour. They were a write-off anyway, those socks, covered in some mud that the side of the road had come up with when I'd gone to retrieve the ball one time. I'd continued to play barefoot until my feet hurt too much from the uneven concrete, and then switched back to shoes. I probably should have stayed wearing them in the first place, but didn't want to step on anyone. The locals were barefoot and unconcerned. I was worried to look at the underside of my feet.
Victorious, however, we limped on down the road, most of our body weight lost to sweat. Water was my only concern, and it was a similar case for the other two. It was after midnight by now, and all the usual vendors were shut up, stray dogs and old people sleeping in their awnings. You could never be sure if they were alive; the dogs, at least, would usually react to the sound of walking by. People slept on top of cars, in the sidecars of bicycles. We asked those who remained awake, cooking on the roadside, orbited by motorbikes, water? Some would fish up half empty pots and offer them, but their contents looked likely scooped up from the same roadside I had lost my socks to. We politely declined.
A few corners down, someone who had heard our march asked knowingly, water? I didn't care about the price, I just took one and delved into my wallet, momentarily unconcerned about having so much currency on display on a Myanmar street corner at night. Five hundred kyats for a bottle. Diogo tried, unsuccessfully to argue them down to four, probably just on principle, but Marco and I just handed over the bills. I was close to buying a second one just to pour over myself.
We sat down on the white plastic chairs. Three Europeans and a half dozen Burmese, with no common means of communication. Picnic tables, more motorbikes. The lady who had sold us the water grinned suddenly and pointed to the street.
“Girl,” she said.
We looked. Sure enough, there was a girl there. We looked back at the lady for elaboration.
“Girl,” she said.
“Yes,” said Diogo, “it's a girl.”
“Gay!” said one of the other guys, who was huddled in a nervously smiling group of three.
“Gay?” we asked.
“Girl,” repeated the lady solemnly.
“Gay girl?” I asked.
“Girl,” she said. This wasn't going anywhere. One of the other guys decided to make his point clearer. He took his hands and extended the index fingers on both and touched the tips against each other.
“Gay,” he nodded.
“Who's gay?” asked Marco.
“Gay?” asked the guy, completely baffled.
Enough was enough. There was a game on television in forty minutes, and we needed to find a place to see it. It was important. We had been told we were in the right area an hour ago when we got sidetracked into playing a game ourselves. We tried to ask, going one word at a time, for clarity's sake.
“Football.”
The lady nodded, and ducked down for a second, and came back up with a ball in her hands. Unexpected, but she got the point.
“TV,” I added, drawing a rectangle in the air with my fingers. I wondered when widescreen had meant an end to doing a square for that, and if my intent to draw a square or rectangle actually made any difference to the finished product.
“Watch football on TV,” said Diogo, putting the pieces together.
The lady nodded in understanding.
“Blue Cafe,” she said, “watch football. This way.” She pointed to the intersection we were sitting at and indicated left.
“One two three,” she said, punctuating it with little chops to represent streets, and then she pointed to the right. “One two three, right”.
We thanked her and limped on, out to the intersection, one street, two streets, three streets, asked someone, back one street, then right. There was little light coming out of anywhere, but half way up we looked into a place that had tables, and a large TV. At that exact moment, a logo flashed up saying “World Cup 2010 Qualifiers”. We had made it. A round of beers, more plastic chairs, teletext results in Swedish and ten minutes of a very bad Cambodian professional league game. There were more kids than adults there, one of whom was doing the beer-serving. There was one old man asleep on a chair opposite us, and another who wandered around drunk, mistaking the fridge for a door and trying to get into it.
It was 1.20am, ten minutes before kick-off when the power cut out.
I checked the score on the internet the following morning.