When I am found dead in a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, please note the following…

A short piece of satirical fiction.

WHEN I AM FOUND DEAD in a hotel guesthouse in Phnom Penh, I have just this one request.

Please don’t read a report on my demise, on one forum or another, and then leave a comment below the line.

It’s a big ask, I know.

For starters, someone out there will have a very strong inclination to write: “Another one?”

Or: “And the old men continue to drop like flies…”

As if it’s somehow a surprise that so many decrepit piss-pots and/or drug-addled relics from the western world keep meeting their demise in this city.

Now, I suppose there’s a chance I won’t be found in my pokey little 10-dollar room. Which seems like the loneliest of ends. Doesn’t it?

I might fall out of a tuk-tuk – let’s say that’s the 100 to one long shot. That lively conclusion could divert comments away from me being a ‘deathpat’ to tuk-tuks being ‘death-traps’…

Sweet result, if so.

It’s also not beyond the realms of plausibility that I could have an aneurysm (25/1), a major stroke (8/1) or a heart attack (odds on favourite) while shopping for my daily essentials – cans of beer, a bottle of liquor, a pack of smokes, 3 litres of water, painkillers (if I have run out), some bananas, an apple.

If I keel over in a sunbaked street at midday, the jury would be out. Some tentative verdicts might even be somewhat forgiving. “Don’t forget to keep hydrating, kids. R.I.P.”

Another might be more irreverent and damning: “Who let grandpa wander outside in the midday sun?”

There’s also a chance that I will be found at the bottom of a staircase in my guesthouse.

That would be unfortunate. Not because I would have stumbled to my death. No, because if that happens, someone below the line will want to (gleefully) raise the possibility of foul play: “Why do these old guys always fall down the stairs… seems a little bit *too* common, no?”

“No way he was alone,” an already convinced keyboard warrior would then reply.

As if degenerates with dodgy hips never make a misstep.

There would be shout outs for police negligence/ corruption. Perhaps someone would wonder why the body has not been cremated at the morgue after ‘x’ number of days. Because, murder. It must be: “Can’t prove it but don’t need to prove it.”

FFS.

But (anti-climax alert) no one will need to do a ‘Poirot’ on this one: “Why Hastings, I believe the killer is none other than the victim himself, n'est-ce pas?”

Whatever you wish to say, as sure as night follows day, I know some of you will want to add ‘🙏’ at the end of your comment. So you’re seen as oh so sincere and vaguely spiritual.

Please don’t.

I mainly hate this “hand emoji” because it’s twee-as-fuck. But also, for me, ‘🙏’ is actually the ‘smacking one’s hands together to kill a mosquito’ hand emoji.

Just so you know.

Side note: my advance thanks to the monks for doing the donkey work on taking my body to a pagoda, but people shouldn’t get any ideas i.e. don’t even think of writing “may his soul fly to Buddha… ”

I mean, I’d hardly come to Phnom Penh and live in a shitty guest-house, if I believed in an afterlife, would I?

Anyway, if I am indeed found in my room, it’s very possible the ‘report’ might list my apparent possessions at the time of death. Some dollars, an old phone, a passport; [unspecified] pills, a few bananas, an apple.

Someone will want to make a joke about the apple. Or slipping on a banana skin.

Others will see a list of clues and want to connect the dots.

The third-to-last detail, in particular, will tempt the know-it-alls to weigh in with great authority.

E.g.: Kampot_Kurtz: “Too much ‘bad’ medicine.”

CheapCharly69 would wish to concur, adding: “Chinese Benzos and fake opioids, most probably.”

TheMekongBeerMonster: “Dope fiend. Dodgy drugs. End of.”

But the actual cause of death? Nobody below-the-line will know for sure, and yet everyone below-the-line will know: Slow, steady self-destruction.

There might also be a picture of my body, wrapped from head-to-toe in a thick sheet, like a grim installation.

It (the former me) will be left (without ceremony) outside my guesthouse on a numbered street while police, medics, the guest-house owner and staff (all looking a little grumpy at the inconvenience I have caused them – I will if possible, try to die looking apologetic) figure out what to do with a foreign corpse.

I can probably forgive someone looking at this ignominious spectacle and wanting to write: “Fuck me – when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, I hope I'm not left to lie on the side of a road for all to gawp at...”

I mean, that would be human of you.

But do your best to resist even that.

It’s also quite possible that at the time of death I will owe somebody, somewhere money. They might want to go ‘below the line’ and express a certain amount of indignation. I get that. I mean, nobody likes to get stiffed.

Ba-dum - Tssssh.

But hand on my creaking heart, it will be just bad timing. Nothing personal.

For those who don’t know me, I think you don’t need any details (not that I’m offering any) to form a picture of me in your head. You will have guessed correctly that I am old, white, western; not exactly a picture of health. Pickled and/or haggard. Etc.

Creatures like us, we’re all in Phnom Penh for many different reasons, but all of those reasons can be boiled down to this one reason: we’re done with everywhere else.

Home, wherever that is, there’s no going back there; Bangkok (ah, I loved it once — naturally, I was there in its heyday before it went to pot); every other relatively-developed Asian city (getting too expensive; too hard to get visas).

Now, while details of my life story are not important, let me tell you when I wound up in Phnom Penh, I did so with a certain sense of relief — why? Because, I’d made it to the end of the road.

Because, here nobody cares what has befallen me.

Looking around on arrival, the number of fellow dead-beats almost warmed my heart. I was positively suave compared to some of the ghouls wandering up a numbered street, where I found some cheap digs.

I saw one this morning, before I sat down to write this (basically, my last will and testament) — some nerdy teenage school kids were drinking bottled yoghurt drinks outside a mini-mart while this degenerate western man was sucking down a can of Klang before trying to light a cigarette that was the wrong way round (been there).

Photo caption: Same planet, different worlds.

At one stage, the degenerate western man tried to speak to the kids. But he was utterly incoherent — I couldn't even tell what language he was trying to speak. The kids had no idea obviously. Not even his own mother, if she could magically materialise, could have understood what this pitiable wretch was babbling about.

The kids smiled awkwardly, then shared a glance to one another while instinctively shifting the position of their feet – so they could edge away without looking as if they were edging away. He wasn’t a threat to them. I don’t think so anyway. And they weren’t scared of him. Well, I don’t think they were anyway.

Watching him, I found myself wishing that he would scuttle back to his guesthouse room — if he could find it — and just stay there. Then nobody would notice when he kicked the bucket.

But nowadays, there are no secretive or anonymous exits. No death can evade the online obituary or the obligatory below the line ‘tributes’/ hot takes.

I guess that’s why I sat down to write this.

Very, very old friends/ acquaintances back home, when they hear news of my death, I know I can’t stop them turning my life into a cautionary tale in their heads, or quietly whispering where it all went really wrong, all those years ago – the abusive parent(s). The addictions that ran in the family. The first bad decision I made that led to a lifetime of even worse choices. The way that woman broke my heart and took everything. The death that tore me up and left me without a purpose.

Those conversations will occur and then they will be lost to the wind — just the way I like it.

But, maddeningly, the comments below-the-line stick around (possibly forever). With all the guile of school kids writing on a toilet door, a legion of strange and terrible men will all try to get the last word on my death.

It doesn’t make for much of a memorial, does it?

So, if they do start digging in below the line, and take turns to stamp the virtual dirt down, then I have one favour to ask, if you’re there, and willing – please forget what I have said above and leave a comment.

Tell them, “Death never takes a wise man by surprise….”

Then post this in full.

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