Spencer won’t tell me his real Khmer name. He says I won’t be able to pronounce it and that he likes being called a Western name by his Western friends. We met at the Okay Guest House where he’s a tuk-tuk driver and waiter. When I walked shakily down the stairs to that dim hippie restaurant my first night in Phnom Penh and took one of the last available seats next to a bulging tattooed gentleman, Spencer was the first person in my new life to give me an understanding smile. He pointed to the “pineapple pancake” on the menu and asked if I wanted one because it’s “easy for you stomach.” As I sat on the strange straight-backed chair surrounded by guffawing strangers and pushed the food past the tears queuing in my throat, he casually stretched out in a staff chair a reassuring distance away—so close as to be companionable but not expectant or intimidating. When he caught my eye he pointed at the television screen mounted in the front of the room, on which Adam Sandler was spinning around doing some sort of tae-kwon-do while wielding two hairdryers like guns. Spencer held my eye and laughed loudly. “Zohan! Hahahahahahaha. Don’t Mess With Zohan! Haha!” Despite myself, I felt a little better and giggled into my water bottle, too. So we became friends.
“Skinny,” “Shaggy-haired,” and “Giant grin” describe Spencer best. He’s twenty-three but he looks nineteen shuffling around in one of his two pairs of jeans or various beer t-shirts, the bones of his elbows sticking out at rickety angles and his black eyes quick and searching. His hair is a source of pride, being thick and grown out almost to his chin so he can casually run his hand through it or ruffle it up to add punch to a statement. Spencer is almost always found with a glass of hot water in his hand. He has had a racking cough that searches his lungs every time it convulses him since long before the night I met him, and can’t quite scrape together the money to get decent medication. So he’s convinced himself that if he constantly drinks hot water because it keeps the cough in check he’ll be fine. Spencer works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week at the Okay Guest House, the hours being from noon to midnight. On a good day he’ll make $1-2 driving his tuk-tuk, so he picks up little waiter shifts whenever he can snatch them. Making his $14 rent every month weighs on his mind often.
Spencer loves riding his motorbike. Every late night or early morning he can he’ll drive out of the city and roar through the provinces “Because it makes me free. I do not worry anymore when I just drive and go fast.” One morning, after we had been friends for about a week, he hit a loose patch of gravel and fell off his bike, burning his hand badly on the scorching exhaust pipe. I sat with him that afternoon while he held ice to his burns and sucked air through his teeth every time the skin was moved. I tried to convince him for a long time to go to the hospital, but he got firmer with each refusal. Eventually I got him to accept a tube of burn medication that another guest offered—I’ll never forget the lick of embarrassment in his eyes when they met mine as he smeared on the orange paste and quickly focused back on the tube.
We would hang out in the hippie downstairs restaurant for hours when I got back from Mith Samlanh every day, pressing pause on our conversations whenever Spencer had to attend to work. Eventually we traded daily language lessons. I would work with him on his English grammar, spelling, and vocabulary for an hour then he would give me a beginning Khmer lesson. “Emily, ‘muey’ is one.” “’Muay?’” “No. ‘Muuu-eeeey.’” “Huh. ‘Mwee?’” “Yes!” And so on with lots of satisfying miniature victories for both of us. My most vivid memory of these lessons is the time I was working on vocabulary with Spencer using an airline brochure. “Flight attendant? What is that?” he asked me. “Spencer, have you ever been on a plane?” “No. No one I know has,” he said as guilt washed over me. “Do you want me to tell you about it?” I said, hoping to make amends. He grinned and nodded, and we spent the next two hours going over every detail of planes and flying and airports that I could recall.
Over the course of these lessons, we often got to talking about going to school. Spencer wants to go to university to study English more than anything. “I have to have good English. You have to for anything that makes money. I want to be a businessman so I don’t do this for my life. [He gestures around the guesthouse, his gaze resting on the middle-aged manager.] But I can’t go to school anymore. No money for me and school.” Sometimes I didn’t know how to explain to Spencer (or myself) the how and why of me walking down a paved path and wide-open door into a higher education and him essentially stuck working towards next month’s rent with vague but persistent dreams of books filling his head. And I never understood how he could be so kind and encouraging when I talked about college applications or what I wanted to study.
Spencer and I talked about our families and homes a few times. I loved hearing about his home in one of the Northern provinces, and he liked my stories about things like camping. Eventually he told me why he had moved away from home to Phnom Penh all alone when he was twenty. His family found out that his mother was seriously ill three years ago, but the doctor told them she might have a chance if she moved to Vietnam for proper medical care and a change in climate. His dad had died a long time ago, so Spencer was left in charge. He did what the doctor said and had his younger siblings move to Vietnam with his mom, relocating himself to Phnom Penh to find a job that could pay for her medical care. His job at Okay Guest House is not making enough money, but he says he doesn’t have any other options. Spencer and his siblings have resigned themselves to losing their mother within the next year. He is hoping to save enough money to go to Vietnam to see her one last time.
We sat in silence after he told me this, then he quietly said, “Maybe next life, we can switch places. You will be born here in Cambodia and have this life we do. I will be born in America and will not be sad or work so hard for nothing.” I wanted to cry, because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Where your spirit floated down to earth and you were born? Spencer looked down and said, “I would not ask that of you.”
Now I go to the Okay Guest House at least once a week to hang out with Spencer. He took me around on his motorbike one day back when I was wishing fervently for an apartment to fall out of the sky and helped me scour entire blocks for “vacancy” signs and strong-arm landlords, so I save up funny stories for him about my apartment and the problems I encounter living alone. I wish that everyone with an extra fifty dollars in their pocket could have a Spencer who opens their eyes in the way only compassion can—you can’t brush off the suffering of a friend.
