Miss Bangkok: Memoirs of a Thai Prostitute (13 page)

During Jack’s second visit, he asked me if he could meet my mother. In Thailand, such an introduction marks a significant turning point in a relationship. At the time,
mae
was living with Geng in the Rangsit district of Bangkok. I used to visit them both most weekends, enjoying seeing my three children play together.

My family were still unaware that I was working as a go-go dancer and were instead under the impression that I had a job as a waitress in a busy restaurant that catered for foreigners. I told my mother that Jack had been a regular customer of mine that I had gradually gotten to know while serving him. Strictly speaking, my story wasn’t wholly untrue. I’m not sure whether or not my mother actually believed me though. I think that even if she did suspect the truth, she refused to acknowledge it and was much happier to go along with the version of events that I offered her.

Mae
welcomed Jack with open arms. She saw him as the antithesis of Yuth, whom she had gradually come to hate. She gave Yuth the nickname
san lang yao
, meaning ‘very lazy’, or when she was feeling especially vindictive she would call him
ga fak
, after a species of parasite plant. She pinned all her hopes for my happiness on Jack and saw him as my only chance of escaping from the clutches of poverty.

Although Jack was very popular with the other girls in the bar, Nhim didn’t like him. She never openly voiced her reservations about him but instead disguised them in thinly veiled comments advising me against getting too attached to him. She saw him as just another
farang
and believed that if you scratched away the surface, his sweet words would give way to the usual lies and broken promises. I took no notice of Nhim though. I saw him as the first man in my life who didn’t try to control me. I interpreted how comfortable he was with my job as a good thing—I took it as a sign that he wasn’t the jealous, possessive type. In my eyes he was everything that Chai and Yuth weren’t.

His wealth and generosity also attracted me. He reminded me of Hiroshi in that respect. He thought nothing of buying me expensive gifts or taking me on extravagant shopping trips. I had lived all my life in such an extreme state of poverty that I was dazzled by Jack’s wealth and the nonchalance with which he spent it. For his part, I think he appreciated the fact that I didn’t give him a hard time when other girls flirted with him at the bar. I pretended not to be jealous, even going so far as to tell him that he was welcome to have fun with other girls if he wanted. But I was secretly terrified that there would come a night when he would pay the release fine for another girl and bring her back to his hotel room instead of me. I needn’t have worried, though, because Jack only had eyes for me.

I was also impressed by his fun-loving nature. He sometimes went up to the stage and danced with the girls, making people laugh at him. Despite her scepticism, Nhim didn’t try to stop him because he was a good customer who generously bought lots of drinks. After Jack’s debut on stage, Nhim even teased him back onto the stage again. By then, all the staff knew who he was and why he was there. The girls constantly told me how lucky I was to have met him.

Over the next few months our relationship developed into something of a routine. On arrival in Bangkok, Jack would ring and ask me to come to his hotel at once. Unaware that I had a partner and two children at home, he wouldn’t expect me to have any prior commitments. If I was with Peung and Atid I would try to come up with some excuse, but in Jack’s eagerness to see me, he would insist that any other arrangements I had should be secondary to seeing him. I found it increasingly difficult to juggle my two different lives and worried that it was only a matter of time before they collided.

He began to tell me that he loved me and held my hand wherever we went. I never told him that I loved him back; instead I tried to look happy.

As time passed, I began to gradually distance myself from Jack. I did this to protect myself because I knew we had no future together.

I had long since fallen out of love with Yuth, but leaving him would have meant leaving our children because the more time I spent with Jack the more I realised he would never accept them. In that respect he was like every other
farang
I had ever slept with—keen to gloss over the fact that he was far from the first man I’d had sex with. Such baggage would have stifled Jack’s free-spiritedness, and I knew that such a revelation would potentially shatter our relationship. I gradually began to realise that Jack was in love with a woman who didn’t exist, and it became a daily struggle to maintain this illusion and prevent him from discovering the real me.

Once I spotted the first crack in our relationship, it wasn’t long before the entire structure began to give way. I became increasingly disappointed with Jack’s indifference to my working in the bar. He must have known that I was sleeping with other men while he was away, and if he truly loved me then surely this prospect should have repulsed him. He was wealthy enough to have been able to subsidise my income in the bar and allow me to stop working. But he never once suggested this. I began to suspect that his feelings for me stemmed from an infatuation rather than true love. I began to feel like a mere plaything, to be taken out and enjoyed whenever he felt like it. I think he came to like being in control. When he was in Bangkok, he wanted me constantly by his side. I would make up excuses in order to spend a day with Atid and Peung. Other times I would bring friends with me when he asked me to meet him alone. It meant I wasn’t ‘on’ all the time, struggling to talk and listen to English, or struggling to be something I wasn’t.

I often wondered whether things might have been different if I had been more honest with him from the beginning, but I very much doubted so. If Jack had wanted a normal, committed relationship with me, then his impression that I had no familial ties should have encouraged him to suggest I move back to America with him. This realisation tainted my feelings for him.

Every time I accompanied Jack to Don Muang Airport to see him off, he would weep uncontrollably. Perhaps in some countries it is acceptable to see a grown man cry, but in Thailand it is seen as extremely emasculating. My embarrassment at Jack’s open display of emotion was only compounded by the fact that as my feelings for him began to lessen, so too did my displays of emotion in the departure lounge. On one occasion, I rubbed
ya mhong,
a menthol-based balm, into my eyes to make them water. The sight of my teary eyes only served to heighten Jack’s emotions, so from then on, I thought it was safer to be dry-eyed than to risk Jack bawling like a newborn baby.

Even though Jack had the role of a lovestruck man down to a tee, his performance stopped ringing true. He sent me emails from all over the world telling me how desperately he missed me and how he couldn’t stop thinking about me, yet I began to sense that there was something insincere about his sentiments.

When he was away from Bangkok he emailed me regularly, and if I didn’t reply immediately he would send a series of new emails pretending to be gravely worried about my lack of response. Once again I questioned myself why, if he was so concerned about my well-being, he didn’t help me escape from Patpong.

His emails became increasingly frequent and I realised that yet again I had sorely misjudged a man. He was indeed the possessive type. Throughout our relationship, not one night had passed where Jack had neglected to pay me for my time. Even when the relationship escalated and things had clearly progressed past a professional point, he still insisted on paying me. I think he secretly enjoyed the sense of ownership these payments bought him. Whereas Chai and Yuth had used their fists to keep me in line, Jack used money and words. Jack’s emails were like beautiful silken cobwebs, laced with poetic declarations whose sole intention was to ensnare me in a sticky residue of guilt.

Hi Bua darling,

I leave China tomorrow and have to move further away from you for a while. But you are always close in my heart. I miss you sooooooooooooooooooooooo much. Every night is lonely without you. I look at your photograph often and wish I was with you.

I checked my email often but nothing from you yet :(

I have not had an email from you for about a week so I am getting worried again. I hope you are OK. Please write soon as your emails make me happy. I sad now :(

You are in my dreams every night. I cuddle my pillow instead of you but it is not the same. I need you with me.

I hope you are still hugging the bear I bought you – he is a lucky bear if you are. I hope he keeps you with warm thoughts of me.

Write soon please! I check my email every day to see if you have written.

I love you with all my heart darling. Please wait for me also, don’t forget about me.

All my love, hugs and kisses

Jack

As time passed, I came to resent him. I hated him for being possessive. I didn’t like the way he sent email after email demanding that I answer him.

I often tried to write to him using lovers' language but such sentiments were new to me and I didn’t find them natural to convey in writing.

I could not however ignore the money that he provided.
Mae
had often asked about Jack and warned me to stay in contact with him.

Although my feelings for him had completely changed, I felt trapped by the money I stood to lose if I ended our relationship. With so much competition from the other girls in the bar, it wasn’t always easy to attract a
farang,
but when Jack was visiting Bangkok I didn’t have to worry about this.

There were many nights when no one bought me out, and I would have to rely solely on the commission I earned from drinks I might sell. And so, long after the initial flush of love had faded away, I continued on in the relationship.

The fact that my English was so terrible, coupled with my waning feelings for Jack, made it increasingly difficult to reply to his emails, even with my sister’s help. It was for this reason that I befriended a man who worked in an internet café in Soi Patpong 2. He was fluent in English, and for a fee of 50 baht he agreed to translate my emails for me. I considered the fee a paltry amount given all the money Jack had paid me over the months. The arrangement would also be a worthwhile investment if it helped me to retain Jack’s patronage.

Almost a year to the day we first met, I received a strange email. I scanned over the content and saw that although Jack’s name was mentioned several times he did not appear to be the sender. I called my friend in the internet café over to help me decipher it. He read through it quickly.

‘There is trouble with Mr Jack,’ he said. I looked at him quizzically.

‘You listen. I read. But you’re not going to like this,’ he warned.

The email was from a girl called Sarah, claiming to be Jack’s fiancée. She wanted to know if I was the girl he’d been buying gifts for while visiting Thailand. She also wanted to know if I would meet her in person. She ended the email with a curt comment about hoping that I would at least have the decency to reply to her.

I was completely stunned. My translator sat beside me, trying to hide his smile. He had been following our relationship for some time now through the various emails he had translated, and he clearly found this new development amusing. I think that, like Nhim, he had seen this coming all along and thought me a fool for thinking Jack would be any different to other
farang
s. At first I couldn’t help but feel grossly deceived by him but then it hit me that I was guilty of exactly the same deception.

I decided against replying to Sarah. She seemed to be looking for answers, and I didn’t feel that I had any to give her—that was Jack’s responsibility. I decided instead to send Jack an email, simply asking him who Sarah was and that she had written to me requesting I meet her. I knew that such an email would mark the end of our relationship and, more importantly, my income from Jack, but I suspected that Sarah’s discovery of our affair had already sounded the death knell anyway. Jack never responded.

I sent him another nine emails looking for an explanation, but he didn't reply to any of them. My mother and sister were more upset by our break-up than I was. All of their hopes for my happiness sailed off into the sunset with Jack. But for me, the honeymoon period had ended long ago, and Jack’s wallet was the only thing about him that I still found remotely attractive.

The relationship was a lie from beginning to end. I often think of him and wonder if he did marry Sarah, or if she cancelled her wedding.

Did I hate him afterwards? Yes and no. I didn’t hate him because he had a girlfriend; I hated him because he lied. Then I reminded myself that I was also a liar.

His initial sheen had worn off, and he had slowly become more and more transparent. It had taken me some time to fully accept it, but Jack had never had any intention of gallantly sweeping in on horseback and rescuing me from my life. I was just a playmate for him when he was away from his fiancée. I had been forced to compete with many other girls over the years in the bar, but I had also learned to recognise when I was no match for my opponent. And in this case, Jack’s fiancée was always going to be the victor.

Of course it eases the unpleasantness somewhat if the customer is not fat, does not smell like a pot-bellied pig, and is easy on the eye. But offering your body up to strangers to use and abuse as they see fit is not a vocation any woman chooses, but rather is one born of desperation.

It is for this reason that few bar girls will ever admit to what we do for a living. Instead, we spin elaborate lies and concoct intricate stories to conceal the truth. The only person who knew what I did for a living was Yuth. I dared not tell my parents or my sister because I was afraid of losing face or humiliating them. But I suspected that they knew the truth. They must have wondered how I managed to earn enough money from waitressing to support my children and an unemployed husband.

Whenever I felt like running away, I thought of my children. I had become a prostitute solely to give them a better childhood than the one I’d had. A job in a factory would barely have put enough food on the table for one person, never mind a family of four. It was never a simple matter of walking away from Patpong. Initially, this way of life and the money I earned from it had been a crutch, helping me to walk again after the crippling effects of poverty. But somewhere along the way this crutch had become the very backbone of my existence; its vertebrae like tendrils wrapping themselves around my every organ. I was trapped.

Almost all of the girls I worked with in the bar found it difficult to cope on a day-to-day basis. For me, alcohol possessed palliative powers, whilst other girls found comfort in drugs. But there were some for whom no amount of drink, drugs, or money helped ease their pain. Some of these girls fell prey to depression, and I watched them retreat further and further into themselves, powerless to help them.

One such girl was my friend Priew. By the time Priew started working in the bar I had already been there for a year. She was a tall, strikingly beautiful girl from the north of Thailand. Girls from the north are known for their fair complexion and sweet manner. She never told anyone what province she was from for fear that word of her new profession would make its way back to her family and friends.

When Priew first started working in the bar, Nhim decided that she should work as a casual girl because
farang
s were clearly transfixed by her. Men flocked around her, driving the other girls in the bar crazy with jealousy. She just danced and waited to be chosen. Sometimes two men wanted to buy her at the same time. My first impression of Priew was that she was arrogant, as she didn’t mix with the other girls at all. I would often say hello to her when I arrived for my shift in the bar, but she would just stare mutely into space, refusing to acknowledge my greeting. It was only as I got to know her better that I realised her isolation wasn’t self-inflicted, but rather the result of the other girls’ efforts to punish her for her beauty. One of the few things that made working in the bar a little more bearable was the camaraderie that usually existed between us girls: the fact that Priew was being excluded from this must have made her life that little bit more miserable.

I found her crying in the toilet one night just before closing time. Her only defence against the other girls had been the mask of indifference she had so carefully applied. But as she stood before me now, with mascara-laden tears streaming down her cheeks, I realised that beneath her glacial exterior lay a very sad and troubled girl.

I asked her what was wrong, tentatively placing my arm around her in an effort to comfort her.

‘I can’t live like this anymore. What if my parents see me like this? I hate myself for what I have become,’ she blubbered.

Priew went on to explain how she had first come to be a go-go dancer in Patpong. She told me that several years ago her partner had accumulated huge gambling debts that they were unable to repay. Not knowing what to do, she turned to her sister for advice. Her sister was a go-go dancer in Patpong and told her that she could spend the rest of her life trying to repay the debt on a meagre factory wage, or she could make more money than she could ever imagine working in the bars of Patpong. Priew reluctantly agreed to the proposition. But it came to be, she said, the biggest mistake of her life.

She told me about the first time she had been bought by a
farang
. Like me, she was bought on her first night in the bar. It can be bad for confidence levels to have to struggle for weeks on end to attract a
farang,
but at the same time, for a terrified newcomer, it is potentially very damaging to have to sleep with a stranger on your very first night.

The
farang
, she said, had been a much older man. He took her back to his hotel room and asked her to remove her clothes. When she broke down in tears he told her he didn’t mind waiting until the following morning if she would feel more comfortable about sleeping with him then. He even paid her 4,000 baht upfront in an effort to get her to relax. But as soon as the
farang
fell asleep, Priew got dressed and fled the hotel.

Her beauty secured her a second customer the following night. He was a shy, well-dressed Chinese man. For 2,000 baht, she agreed to accompany him to his hotel. Once there, they sat on the bed and began making awkward small talk. The night wore on, and the Chinese man still hadn’t made an advance. Priew began to wonder if he had paid her simply for her company. Or was he perhaps expecting her to be the aggressor? But after several hours, and numerous lengthy silences, he finally seemed ready to make a move. He began to unbutton his shirt, and in a hushed, embarrassed-sounding tone, he said that he hoped she would be able to cope with his condition. Not knowing what he was referring to, and feeling increasingly panicky with every button he undid, Priew simply nodded in reply. But she gasped in horror when he took off his shirt and revealed the nature of his ‘condition’.

His upper body was covered in long, purple, welt-like scars and he wore a prosthetic leg. His good leg had been harvested for skin grafting. Only his neck and lower arms had been spared. He looked like he had been whipped to within an inch of his life. Priew couldn’t take her eyes off him, and it was only when he pulled his shirt back on that she finally looked away. The Chinese man didn’t say anything, just lowered his head in a resigned manner as if to say that this was exactly the reaction he had been anticipating. It was at that moment that Priew stopped being scared of sleeping with him. She realised that the money this man was offering her in exchange for sex not only bought him the right to her body but also her indifference to his bodily defects. The Chinese man was to be the first of many customers that Priew slept with.

Whereas she learned not to judge customers, be it on their looks or personality, she became highly critical of herself. Her self-respect dwindled with every customer she slept with.

Priew finished her story and continued sobbing in my arms for some time afterwards. Like so many other girls I knew, the sex industry had chewed her up and spat her out. She was a broken woman; the remnants of her self-esteem lay shattered on the ground, like miscellaneous pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that no longer made up a complete picture. I helped her get up and asked if she wanted to go for something to eat with me and some friends. She instantly agreed, and from that moment on she became like my little sister.

I often wondered if the
farang
s who frequented Patpong ever stopped to ask themselves why we chose this life. Did they recognise our desperation, and realise that we sold our bodies purely as a means of survival? Did they ever wonder about the lives we led outside of the bars and their hotel rooms?

Patpong girls slowly become mere shadows of their former selves. If we didn’t become hardened to the job we do, then we couldn’t cope with the emotional toll we inflict on ourselves. We have learned to make light of our situation and laugh about it although we are dying inside.

Priew never showed any sign of weakness to me again. She drank and smoked regularly and became business-like, with her eyes fixated on the money she would made.

These days she talks to me about how expensive oil is and about the insurance premium for her car, all the while trying to cover up the fact that she was the woman who once broke down in my arms. I guess she had to harden herself and conceal her despair in order to survive in Patpong.

She and her sister had been sending money back to their mother at home. Like me, Priew’s father had a
mia noi
but she talked openly about how she came to despise her
por
because he slapped her sister in the face after she had a fight with the
mia noi
. Her father later broke up with his second wife and reconciled with their mother after he found out that his daughters had been supporting her.

My close friends and I made a pact that we would try to help each other get through the night more easily, whenever it was possible. Whenever one of us succeeded in securing a customer, she would ask him if he wanted service from her friend as well. A client could buy as many girls as he liked, and I was more comfortable being bought out along with my close friends. One of us would give oral sex while the others would caress his body. For couples who had bought us, we would put on a lesbian show while they had sex. Competition and jealousy were already high in the bar and at the end of the day we just wanted to make as much money as we could. We found it was more productive to work together rather than prey on the same target.

Priew and I were bought by two young white men once. We went into separate rooms. An hour later, I finished my job and was waiting for her to come out. I knocked on her door, and Priew said she would be with me in ten minutes. When we met up at the lobby I asked her why it took her so long. She almost burst out laughing as she told me that, for the first time, she had met a man with a downturned erect penis. She compared it to an upside down tusk of an elephant. It was difficult for them to figure out a way to have intercourse. She said they changed from one position to another, but his penis kept sliding out. He had never been with a woman before because he had been so embarrassed about the shape of his penis, and he couldn’t figure out the best way to have intercourse when he was with Priew.

He couldn’t ejaculate, even when Priew gave him a hand job and a blow job. They both became resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t orgasm, but the man gave her 2000 baht for her time.

Another friend of mine, Roj, first started working as a prostitute when she was 17 years old. I met her when she was 30, and by that time she had slept with hundreds of
farang
s. Like me, she gave up school because her family was poor.

She often reminisced about her early days as a prostitute, which she claimed had been a lot simpler. At first I found it difficult to equate this nostalgia with such a cold and degrading industry, but Roj described what it had once been like. She claimed that when she had first started out, customers had been a lot less demanding and a lot more generous—a winning combination. The advent of the internet and the increase in foreign travel meant that
farang
s began exchanging tips and offering one another advice. The balance of power shifted as the men became more savvy.

Roj enjoyed the support of many
farang
patrons during her early years, allowing her to take extended breaks from the industry. Inevitably, however, these patrons drifted back to their wives, and Roj returned to work in the bar. But she never begrudged these men and seemed to accept their wives’ precedence as only fair and natural. Roj understood that we girls would never be anything more than fleeting fancies to
farang
s.

I came to love Roj as if we were family, and I affectionately called her my sister. We never competed with one another for customers but often teamed up when approaching a
farang
, claiming to be sisters. Oftentimes, if one of us grew tired of trying to satisfy a customer, the other would change the condom and take over. But we always divided the fee, regardless of whether or not we had both slept with the customer.

Once we double-dated two men, one of whom was severely scarred on the face. We agreed to go out with them because they were very generous with money. Roj bravely volunteered to sleep with the scarred man and assigned me to deal with the other one. Once we were in their hotel room, the other man and I excused ourselves into the bathroom to do our business, leaving Roj and Scar Face in the bedroom. After we finished we were paid handsomely—6,000 baht for less than two hours’ work. Roj showed her callous side by telling me what had happened between her and Scar Face. She told me she was on top of him, swaying her head all the time, pretending to enjoy the sex. She did it so her hair would cover her eyes, thus preventing her from the sight of his damaged face. If he were on top of her she couldn’t avoid seeing his face. She joked that all the time she kept thinking about the money, and wondered how long it would take him to climax. After she finished, I was about to hand her an extra 1,000 baht for taking the harder job, but she insisted we share the fee equally as always.

Roj gave me a lot of invaluable advice. She helped me to tailor my behaviour to suit the different classifications of clients I would be dealing with. She told me that the older
farang
s preferred the more ladylike girls; the middleaged men were attracted to gentler girls; and the younger men liked flirty, outgoing girls.

Roj openly admitted to the fact that the industry had hardened her.

‘
Farang
s use us so why shouldn’t we use them in return,’ I often heard her say, without a trace of emotion. She was one of the few prostitutes I knew who didn’t let herself be defined by what she did. She was also the only girl I met who thought that the increase in Thai women entering prostitution was a result of Thai society being more open about our kind of women. I didn’t agree with this sentiment, though. I saw no evidence that people were more accepting of prostitutes, and I still felt too ashamed to tell anyone what I worked at.