Private Dancer Page 11

  You know, I actually believe that generally speaking, Thais don't like us. It's partly a racial thing, they really do believe that we're inferior to them. Sure, we're physically bigger and we have more money, but they reckon we're not much smarter than animals. They call us water buffaloes or monitor lizards. There's no bigger insult than to say that a person is an animal, and that's what they think we are. We're a source of income, that's all. Sometimes they might take a longer term view, but it's still all about hard cash at the end of the day.

  There's a guy comes in here to drink, name of Greig. Runs a restaurant and bar off Sukhumvit which is as close to being a brothel as you can get without actually having short-time rooms upstairs. Anyway, Greig got himself a Thai wife a few years back. He swears blind she wasn't a bargirl, but you can just tell from looking at her that she used to dance around a silver pole. They've got a couple of kids and he dotes on her. But I know for a fact that she doesn't love him. She doesn't even like him. He wears this thick gold chain around his neck, five baht it is, maybe six, and hanging on it are two gold Buddhas. Now, I'm not averse to wearing gold, and I've got a Buddha on my neck chain myself, but I happen to know that it's only lucky if you have an odd number of Buddhas. One or three, maybe five. Any more than that and you look like a fucking Christmas tree. But two or four, that's really unlucky. That's what they put on corpses. Now, Greig doesn't know that, he walks around with his two Buddhas like he's something special. But his wife, she's got to know the significance of wearing two Buddhas. So why doesn't she tell him? Why does she let him make a fool of himself? Because she doesn't fucking care, that's why. She's married him, she's had two kids by him, but he means nothing to her. He's a water buffalo to her, nothing more. She's probably got a Thai husband that she shags every chance she gets. But you couldn't tell Greig that. He reckons the sun shines out of her fanny.

  Let me tell you one thing I've learned during my time in Thailand. You can't treat a Thai girl the same way you'd treat a Whisky Tango. Whisky Tango? WT. White Trash, it's what we call farang women around here. Anyway, the guys who seem to make a go of their relationships with Thai girls all have one thing in common. They treat them like dogs. Now, tell that to your average WT and she'll hit the feminist roof, but it makes a lot of sense to me. I don't mean you put a leash on them and make them eat off the floor, though some of the girls working in Fatso's would benefit from being treated that way, I can tell you. No, I mean you treat them like pack animals, because when you get right down to it, that's what they are. Pack animals.

  They live in packs. Most of them come from farms where they all live in one room. When they move to Bangkok, they usually end up sharing rooms, not just because it's cheaper, but because they prefer to live in groups. They eat together, they share food, they bathe together. They happily sleep together, up to half a dozen on a double bed. They prefer to be in groups, always. There's nothing lonelier than a Thai on her own. That's why marriages abroad never last. They miss their own.

  Now, the important thing about pack animals, like dogs and wolves, is the pecking order. They have to know where they stand in the hierarchy. And without a hierarchy, they're lost. You can't give a Thai girl the same freedom you'd give a WT, she'd only see it as a sign of weakness. You have to show them who's the master. The boss. And if you want to keep them happy, you have to treat them the same way as you'd treat a dog.

  What does a dog want from its owner? It wants to be fed, and it wants somewhere warm to sleep. It wants to be exercised and entertained, and it wants to know who's boss. That means the occasional clip around the ear, nothing serious, just a tap. Watch a group of dogs. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a dominant dog will snap at a weaker dog, grab it around the throat and give it a shake, and the weaker dog will go all submissive, lie with its legs in the air and twitching its tail. It's not scared, it knows it's all part of the process of reinforcing the hierarchy. In fact, the weaker dog doesn't bear a grudge, it positively welcomes the punishment, it makes it feel safe. Secure. That's what Pete should do to Joy, give her a good clip around the ear whenever he catches her in a lie and not try to reason with her, the way he does. She'd respect him for hitting her. Anything less she'll see as a sign of weakness.

  JIMMY

  A few of the guys say I’ve got misogynistic tendencies, but I say that’s a load of bollocks. I love women. In their place. Mind you, found a great thing on the internet the other day. Made me howl with laughter. A list of sexual positions. I think the guy that wrote them was joking, but I can’t wait to try them out:

  The Teabagging: This is the all time classic. Whilst your girl is sucking on your balls, rhythmically tap your dick on her forehead while uttering the timeless phrase ‘Who's your daddy?’

  The Houdini: Go at it doggy-style until you are just about to come, then pull out and spit on her back so she thinks that you have cum. When she turns around a blast is unleashed into her face and she is left shocked and amazed, wondering how you managed it.

  The Angry Dragon: Immediately after you blow your load in a girl's mouth, smack the back of her head and make it come out of her nose. When she gets up she'll look like an angry dragon.

  Cum Guzzling Sperm Burping Bitch: The once in a lifetime act of blowing a hot steamy load down the back of a girl's throat and then proceeding to give her a large cold bottle of your favourite carbonated drink and making her guzzle it down. Then, shake her head vigorously back and forth to create the Cum Guzzling, Sperm Burping Bitch effect.

  Dirty Sanchez: My particular favourite and a time honoured event in which, while laying the bone doggy-style, you insert your finger into her asshole. Just before you are about to come, pull it out and wipe it across her upper lip. This leaves a thin shit moustache, and makes her look like someone whose name could be ‘Dirty Sanchez’.

  The Donkey Punch: Banging a girl doggy style until moments before you cum, you stick your dick in her ass and punch her in the back of the neck. The blow to the neck will stun the muscles in the girl's ass, which will constrict the penis and give you a tremendous orgasmic experience when you ejaculate.

  The Flaming Amazon: This one's for all you pyromaniacs out there. When you're screwing some tart, right when you're about to cum, pull out and quickly grab a cigarette lighter and set her pubes on fire, then...extinguish the flames as you cum!

  The Flying Camel: For all Cartoon Network fans. As she is lying on her back and you are hammering her on your knees, you very carefully move forward and prop yourself (without using your arms) on your dick while it is still inserted in her. You then proceed to flap your arms and let out a long shrieking howl, much like the famous cartoon flying camel. Strictly a classy move.

  The Screwnicorn: When a lesbian puts her strap-on dildo on her forehead and proceeds to go at her partner like a crazed unicorn.

  The Zombie Mask: While getting a blow job from your favourite and mostly unsuspecting tarty whore, tell her you want her to look right up at you with those ‘pretty little eyes’ when you blow your load. Then, just when you're ready to blow a good week's worth of sperm, blast that hefty load in both her eyes. The temporary state of blindness will produce the zombie effect as she stumbles around the room with arms outstretched, and moaning like the walking dead. Out with the digital camera for posterity!

  PETE

  Joy phoned me one afternoon and asked if I was going to see her that night in Zombie. I said I probably was, but I asked her if she'd come and see me in the hotel first. She'd come to the hotel several times and I was no longer shy about her visiting. She said she'd come at six o'clock, about an hour before she was due to start work.

  I worked on the book until she came. It was going well, I was meeting all Alistair's deadlines and I now had a reliable photographer supplying us with pictures. On average I was writing five thousand words a day, equivalent to about ten pages, and I knew it was good stuff.

  I stopped writing when there was a knock on the door. It was Joy, wearing a short T-shirt that showed off her mi
driff and flared black jeans. She looked cute, but she looked like a hooker. I'd asked her time and time again to wear a jacket or a more respectable shirt, but she never listened to me. It wasn't that she didn't look good, she did, but respectable Thai girls didn't walk around showing off their stomachs, and the fact that she didn't have long sleeves meant that the scars on her wrist were clearly visible. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't ashamed of Joy, but I didn't like the way that Thais looked at her so contemptuously. I wanted them to look at her and think that she was a pretty girl with a farang, not a bargirl with her customer.

  She fluttered her long lashes at me which she knew always made me laugh. I let her in and she sat on the edge of the bed. She nodded at the laptop computer. ‘So how your book?’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  She was holding her red wallet.

  ‘You have my picture?’ I asked. I was still worried about what Nigel had said, that she'd left Zombie with a farang. I remembered what had happened a week or so after I'd met Joy. We'd been sitting together and a big, bearded guy came up to our table. He winked at Joy and gave her two ten by eight inch colour photographs, then left. They were pictures of Joy, smiling at the camera, wearing a black and white striped dress. I'd asked Joy who the man was and she said he was just a friend and that he'd taken photographs of several girls a few days earlier. She'd handed me the photographs and said that she wanted me to have them. I looked at them closely.

  They'd obviously been taken in a hotel room. Okay, so maybe he'd invited a group of girls to his room to take their picture, but it seemed way more likely that Joy had been alone with him, and that she'd done what she usually did in hotel rooms. I didn't say anything at the time and I hadn't mentioned it since. I figured that he'd known her before I'd met her, that I had no right to question her on what had happened in her past. But now she was virtually my girlfriend, albeit one who was working as a bargirl. Now I reckoned I did have the right.

  She held out her wallet and I took it. The two photographs of the two of us together were there. I closed the wallet and gave it back to her.

  ‘What you think, Pete? You think I not have your picture?’

  ‘I don't know what to think, Joy. You work in a bar, you see lots of men every night...’

  ‘I have you only one,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I know, I know. But I don't like you working in Zombie.’

  ‘I not want work in bar, Pete.’

  ‘So what do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘I don't know.’ She shrugged. ‘I want stay with you. I want go everywhere with you.’

  I couldn't help but smile at her. She seemed so open and vulnerable, I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and protect her.

  ‘But I have to keep travelling to research the book,’ I said. ‘And I'm really busy now. You'd be bored with me.’

  She shook her head fiercely. ‘No. Never.’

  I didn't know what to suggest. I didn't want her working in the bar; I was constantly worried about what she might be up to when I wasn't there. But if she gave up work and stayed with me, I knew she'd soon be bored. I had to spend hours each day in front of my computer, I wouldn't be any company for her.

  ‘Pete, I have an idea. Maybe I go stay with my father in Surin. Then I come see you when you not busy.’

  I was surprised. ‘You'd do that?’ I said.

  ‘My father very happy if I stay with him. Mon in Surin, too. I can help her take care of Nonglek.’

  I thought about it. It seemed the perfect plan. She'd be away from the bars, but she'd be able to come and see me whenever my workload wasn't too heavy. But I knew there'd be a price. ‘How much would you need to live in Surin?’ I asked.

  She looked at me and for a wild moment I felt like a pig being eyed up by a butcher. Then she smiled and the feeling evaporated as quickly as it had arrived. ‘Thirty thousand baht,’ she said, and smiled coquettishly.

  Bruno had told me that Surin was in one of the poorest parts of Thailand. Thirty thousand baht would be a fortune there. ‘Thirty thousand baht a month?’ I repeated. That would be twice as much as a teacher earned. ‘Come on, I want you to live in Surin, not buy it.’

  Her eyes flicked from side to side, then she looked up hopefully. ‘Twenty thousand baht?’

  I shook my head. ‘I think ten thousand baht would be better,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight,’ I said. ‘You can stop working tonight, and go to Surin in a couple of days.’

  Joy squealed and threw her arms around my neck. ‘I love you too much,’ she said.

  JOY

  I wasn't surprised when Pete asked me to stop work. I knew he didn't like me working in the bar. But I thought he'd pay me more than ten thousand baht a month. He can afford a lot more. When I worked he paid my bar fine maybe twelve or fifteen times a month and gave me money every time he made love to me. That comes to a lot more than ten thousand baht. I didn't complain because if I was in Surin I wouldn't have to pay rent, and food and stuff is cheap. And I figured I could always ask him for more later.

  He went with me to Zombie and I told the mamasan that I was quitting. All the girls were really jealous. I think every bargirl wants a farang to take care of them, to give them money every month so that they don't have to work. The mamasan wasn't nice about it, though. She said that I'd be back before long, that I was crazy to give up work because farangs always lie. If he really loved you he'd offer to marry you and take you to England, she said.

  I told her that Pete lived in England and that England was always cold and wet. So why didn't he want me to live with him in Bangkok, she asked. Because he was busy with his book, I said. And what did Park have to say, she asked. I told her that Park could come back to Surin with me. I wanted to get him out of Bangkok anyway. There were too many temptations in Nana Plaza. Too many girls.

  BIG RON

  See, the big mistake that Pete made was that he thought that Joy was giving up work because she loved him. She spun the same old line, that she loved him so much that she didn't want to dance in Zombie. He sat in the bar and said he was sure she was serious, because he was only giving her ten thousand baht a month and she could earn three or four times that dancing and hooking. And that, right there, is where he made his big mistake, because he was thinking like a farang. Sure, given a choice between earning ten thousand baht or thirty thousand baht, your average farang is going to go for the bigger sum. But Thai bargirls are basically lazy, and the choice he was giving Joy was ten thousand baht for doing nothing or twenty thousand baht for dancing four or five hours a night and screwing customers in short time hotels for more money. For the average Thai bargirl, doing nothing is the better option.

  And Pete was sweetening the pot by letting her go to live in Surin. Fuck it, he encouraged her to go. Now the average farmer probably only earns two thousand baht a month, and if there's any factory work going, it probably pays three thousand baht. So Pete was giving her three times the average monthly wage to go and live with her dad and the rest of her family. She wasn't giving up work because she loved him, she was just choosing the easy option.

  Finding staff who'll work hard for reasonable money is the bane of my life, I can tell you. Half the girls I hire to work behind my bar don't even bother to turn up. Shit, they get seven thousand baht a month and all they have to do is serve drinks and food. They don't even have to smile at my customers, the guys come here for the food and the booze, not the female company. My girls get a free uniform, one day off a week, and two weeks holiday a year, which is a darn sight more than they get working in Nana Plaza, but a good bartender is rarer than hen's teeth.

  I had one girl, pretty little thing, face like a twelve-year-old, long, long hair and a swimsuit model's body. She came in for an interview and spoke excellent English and seemed perfect. She was a bit sketchy about her previous jobs but that probably just meant she'd been living off a farang for a while and was too shy to admit it. Anyway, I arranged for her to
come in the following day for a week's trial. She turned up bang on time and I gave her a uniform. She went to lean against the beer fridge and started talking to one of the other girls, Noo, I think it was. Now, we were a bit short on change and there's usually a rush just before twelve so I asked the new girl if she'd go to the bank and get some change. I gave her five thousand baht and told her to come back with twenties and fifties. She smiled, took the money and went back to the fridge and carried on talking to Noo.

  Now, I didn't get upset, I just smiled and called her back over and said that I needed the change now, and asked her very pleasantly to go to the bank right away. Fuck me, she throws a fit, she does, calls me all sorts of names, says that she didn't expect to have to work like a dog and with that she flounces out, her nose in the air, and I never see her, or the uniform, again.

  NIGEL

  I thought I was finally getting a handle on Thailand, but yesterday I was thrown a curve ball that’s had me re-evaluating the Land of Smiles and my attitude to it. It all started with my missing chips (I can’t bring myself to call them French fries any more, not after the bastard French tried to screw the whole Iraqi thing). I was in a pub in Sukhumvit Road, the Sheep’s Head.

  I’ve been going to the Sheep’s Head for the last five years, and I guess I’m there at least once a week. It doesn’t have the same atmosphere as Fatso’s and the girls are a darn sight plainer, but the food is better. I’m friendly with the staff and a good tipper – I usually leave at least 20 baht no matter what I eat or drink, often as much as 50 baht.