Miss Bangkok: Memoirs of a Thai Prostitute (10 page)

My efforts to disguise my nervousness had been in vain because when I reached his table, he smiled sympathetically at me and asked if I was alright. He guessed this was my first night. My paper-thin mask fell away instantly, and my terror was written all over my face. It was all I could do to remain standing. He informed Nhim that he would like to buy me. She could see how terrified I was so she leaned over and whispered in my ear.

‘What’s wrong dear? You’re trembling like a newborn bird. Pull yourself together and go give him his money’s worth.’

The westerner handed the
mamasan
500 baht, which was the bar’s fine to release me from work. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand, and so the bars can’t actually charge customers to buy a girl out. They can only fine the customer for removing the girl from her work duties, which are simply to entertain the customers by dancing and to encourage them to buy drinks. It is then up to each girl to negotiate a fee directly with her client, which removes the bar from the picture completely.

He took me by the hand. I waved to Nok as we swept by her, but she had her hands full entertaining two
farang
s and didn’t see me.

The
farang
never told me his name or asked for mine. When we left the red-light district he flagged a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a hotel in Din Daeng.

The hotel was beautiful—I had never seen such opulence before in my life. The
farang
took me straight to the bedroom, which was the size of my entire shack; in fact even the bed itself would have given my shack a run for its money. Thai furnishings and artefacts decorated the walls, and the carpet was so plush it wrapped around my feet like velvety quicksand.

He poured me a drink from the mini-bar. He sat back on the bed and smiled encouragingly at me.

I understood what he had said but in my nervousness the few English words that I had became scrambled.

When he realised that I couldn’t communicate, he decided to switch to gestures and signs instead. He beckoned for me to follow him into the bathroom, where he proceeded to turn on the shower. I interpreted this as an instruction for me to wash. He sat watching as I undressed, but left the room when I stepped under the water. On my return the
farang
excused himself and took his turn in the bathroom.

I stood in the middle of the bedroom with a small bathrobe wrapped around me. I wasn’t sure what to do next—should I wait here in my robe, or should I take it off and climb into bed? Did this man prefer to be in control or would he like me to take the initiative? My mind was swarming with questions as I had absolutely no idea what to expect—in fact Nok had warned me earlier that night to expect the unexpected.

In the end, I tentatively climbed under the bed covers. My heart was beating so loudly that I was convinced the
farang
could hear it through the closed door of the bathroom.

I wished that I could reach out and hit the pause button on some clock that would bring the whole world to a standstill.

I wasn’t technically a virgin yet I felt like I was about to give up a different type of innocence to this man, something I would never be able to retrieve.

What if he was aggressive? What would I do? What if he wanted to do something I didn’t want to do? Would I have to act, pretending I was having a good time with him? It also crossed my mind that his manhood might be too big for me.

He returned to the room minutes later with a towel wrapped around his waist, and I lay perfectly still while he removed it. He made some comment that I suspected was about my body, but I couldn’t understand him. He gently pulled my legs apart and, to my surprise, rather than entering me, he started to rub himself up and down between my thighs until he eventually came to a loud, shuddering climax. I was strangely embarrassed and felt my face flush.

The act had taken no more than ten minutes, and when he was finished he went back into the bathroom to take a shower. I decided to take another shower when he was done. I wanted to wash away all traces of his touch. I scrubbed myself with a bar of soap until my skin was almost raw.

When I was finished, I got dressed, took a deep breath, and opened the bathroom door.

He was sitting on the end of the bed waiting for me. He smiled and thanked me before handing me my fee of 2,000 baht. I
wai
’d in thanks and took the money.

Once I was outside the hotel I counted the money. I had 4,000 baht in total. It would be the equivalent of almost a month’s wages if I were working in a factory. I had easily enough money to feed and clothe my family, and perhaps even enough to send something to my mother for Geng.

Knowing the full worth of this sum of money somehow made me feel less guilty about what I’d had to do to earn it. Considering that I didn’t have intercourse with him, the situation wasn’t nearly as horrific as I’d anticipated. In fact, I surprised myself by hoping that I could find more customers like him. Only hours earlier I’d been in such a state of terror that I thought I might actually be physically incapable of going through with it, and now here I was planning ahead and thinking to myself that maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad job after all.

‘If you are late, you will be deducted one baht per minute,’ she warned me.

It suited me to work nights, because it meant that I would get to spend the day with my children, so I happily agreed.

The ‘D-girls’, as she liked to call them, were divided into two groups: the casuals and the disciplined. I was to join the latter group, which meant that I wouldn’t just use the club to attract clients. I would be paid to dance seven nights a week whether or not I was bought by a client.

The casual girls, I would later discover, turned up whenever they needed money. They were usually more preoccupied with selling themselves to clients rather than encouraging them to spend money in the bar on drinks, as they didn’t work on commission. I asked Nhim why she tolerated them.

‘The casual girls are usually the youngest and prettiest. They serve as bait with which to lure the customers inside,’ she explained.

Nhim was very professional. She was in charge of screening candidates for go-go dancers, supervising staff in her bar, and enforcing the house rules. Her boss decided how much a go-go dancer would be paid on the basis of what she looked like, and how many clients she attracted. The biggest-earning D-girl at the time got 9,000 baht a month.

‘It has been decided that you will be paid 7,000 baht a month as well as commission for drinks. You can collect your wage in cash on the second day of every month. The boss will hand the cash to you himself.’

In return, I agreed to work seven nights a week and dance on the stage until the bar closed. Unless, of course, a customer bought me. In that case, the customer would pay me 2,000 baht for a quickie or 4,000 baht for an overnight and pay the bar fine of 500 baht to release me.

Nhim told me that I would have to attend the VD clinic. This was non-negotiable—if I refused I would be fired. To my embarrassment she then called out to one of the other dancers, Chompoo, to arrange the appointment for me.

‘Can you show Bua where to get her “oyster” cleaned tomorrow?’ she shouted across the bar.

I was shocked by her bluntness. The sight of my mouth falling open caused a ripple of laughter to spread across the room. I had no idea what the procedure involved but I suspected that it had something to do with venereal diseases.

‘There is nothing wrong with me. I don’t need to be tested,’ I said in a low voice.

Nhim took me to one side, away from the titters of the other girls and spoke more discreetly this time, explaining what the procedure would involve.

‘Because you go-go girls have sex with men you don’t find attractive,’ she whispered, ‘it is rare for you to become wet or excited. Not to mention that some of you might go out with two or three men a night. This causes friction, which leaves you more open to venereal diseases.

‘You are also required to go to the clinic to get your blood tested once every three months. Do you understand?’

She told me that, once a week, a doctor would clean out my vagina for free using a special agent that removes any residue left by the spermicidal lubricants of condoms. If he found any sign of a VD, I would be asked to stop working, and a specialist would give me the correct treatment for it. For the blood test, I had to pay 300 baht and wait a week for the result. I was also given a little book to keep track of my tests.

I turned crimson with embarrassment. Although I was a mother of three children and had made several trips to gynaecologists, I wasn’t accustomed to people being so direct about such intimate and personal matters. All I could do was nod my head in silent consent.

Nhim’s business acumen and brutal honesty were admirable. She was constantly trying to devise new ways of making money and I secretly wondered if some of her ideas came to her in her sleep, as dreamlike visions.

During my first week working in the bar, Nhim held a meeting where we discussed how to attract more customers into the bar. She held these meetings every three months, and even managed to turn these meetings into a moneymaking opportunity; any girl who didn’t attend the meeting was fined 300 baht for being disrespectful. But Nhim’s sense of humour added an element of fun to these meetings and gave us an added incentive to attend, aside from the fear of incurring a fine.

Each meeting began with the usual warning against harassing the customers—which was always a danger when you had so many girls competing together for a man’s attention.

‘It is no fun for a man to be asked to buy a drink for six girls, one after the other. Spread out,’ she would warn.

She would then go on to outline the bar’s house rules, as well as identifying any perpetrators from the month gone by. The most common offence was that one or more of the girls had been over-indulging in alcohol. Overeating was another problem, and Nhim warned the girls against getting fat.

‘No
farang
wants to watch a dugong dance,’ was the common admonition. Nhim took the meetings very seriously; no issue was left uncovered and no topic was considered taboo. We were told that, so long as the client didn’t mind, we could have sex during our menstrual cycle.

In order to stimulate more business, Nhim implemented a bonus system. For every five customers a bar girl bagged, she would receive 100 baht as a bonus. Every time I was bought out, I would get a signature on my card so I could keep track of my performance. It wasn’t a generous amount, but it was an incentive nonetheless.

As I got to know Nhim better, I began to call her
mae
. Beneath her shrewd businesswoman persona was a softer, more caring side, and she really cared about her dancers. She liked to keep this side of her personality as secretive as possible lest anyone take advantage of it. Nhim gave me some insight into the mind of a client—the various personality types I might encounter and the array of sexual fantasies I might be asked to participate in. She also spent time teaching me how to entice
farang
s to buy drinks at the bar.

On the first trip I made to the VD clinic, there was a group of about ten go-go dancers who hung out on a landing of the building. I quickly became a member of the group, which consisted of women who came from Isan and the north of Thailand. Before work, we did our make-up, ate, and drank while talking comically about experiences we had with customers. I learned a lot of tips and tricks from them about the business.

It took me a while to settle into life in the bar. During those first few weeks I would be overwhelmed with apprehension the second a
farang
so much as glanced in my direction. I gradually became more adept at flirting, but when it came to actually propositioning a man, I would freeze up. But I soon mastered the invaluable trick of detaching myself from the event as much as possible. I saw myself as an actress being paid to play a role, and the client was essentially my pay cheque. The other girls used to joke about seeing
farangs
as walking, talking ATM machines. I found it easier to follow suit and standardise the men in such a way, rather than to acknowledge their individual physical features. But every so often a particularly unattractive
farang
would come along and it would take every trick in the book to distance myself.

Nhim told me that fortune had favoured me when I was bought by a
farang
on my first night. Many girls are not so lucky. However, it was several weeks before I met with my next success. In the meantime I danced, flirted, caroused, and did everything I could to hone my talents.

Nhim taught me how to identify which
farang
s were attracted to me based on a split-second glance. She told me to avoid a
farang
wearing sandals and cheap T-shirts no matter how good-looking he is because it means he is probably staying in Khao San Road and won’t pay much for the sex. After a lot of practise, I eventually became a master of manipulation— the most lauded talent a prostitute can possess. Tom was the second
farang
to buy me. He was an older man, with a receding hairline and a rounded paunch that rested on his lap. But with two baht symbols lighting up the pupils of my eyes, I marched over and took a seat beside him.

‘Hi, I’m Bua from Khorat,’ I said in the friendliest tone I could manage. I gazed into his eyes with what I hoped was a childlike innocence. Young men like you to be flirtatious and outgoing while older men like you to be sweet and demure. His body language was awkward and unsure, and he seemed slightly bewildered by his surroundings. I suspected that this might be his first time in Bangkok and that he had stumbled into the red-light district by accident. Rather than pity his wide-eyed innocence, I immediately recognised what an easy target he would be. I doubted he had any previous experience with go-go girls, so I could charge him as much as I liked and give him as little as possible in return.

I started talking to him in broken English, using my few rehearsed phrases to flatter him and put him at ease; I told him he was very handsome and casually stroked his thigh as I talked. He became very uptight as I touched him, but I pretended not to notice and carried on as normal. He began to relax and before long I felt his hand creep tentatively along my leg. He started talking more too, spewing forth long and winding sentences that I couldn’t understand. I simply nodded in agreement every so often, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I must have nodded at an inappropriate juncture though, because he suddenly paused for a few seconds before resuming at a much slower pace.

‘I come from America. The USA. You understand?’ he said, slowly and deliberately. I simply nodded and started massaging him, hoping to distract him. The conversation continued in this vein for almost an hour until I asked him if he would like to buy some drinks. Guessing that he was a first-timer, I calculated that time and copious amounts of alcohol were the two most crucial ingredients necessary to seduce Tom.

I called a waitress over and ordered two drinks—a bottle of beer for him and a so-called ‘lady drink’ for me. For every 140 baht he spent on a bottle of beer, I would earn 40 baht. The lady drink was a small glass of cola, which cost 100 baht and I would also get commission from it. I asked him to sign the receipt so I could collect my commission later. So even if we never left the bar, I could still make some money from Tom. The more he drank, the more I flirted, and as Tom got drunker he became much more responsive. Sensing that the timing was right I finally propositioned him.

‘You want sex? Or I show you around town?’ I asked. He was a little taken aback at first but then nodded in agreement, seemingly unsure of what to do next. I took charge, instructing him that the first thing he needed to do was to pay the bar a release fine. He did as he was told. Even if we never made it out of the bar, the payment ensured that I didn’t have to go back on stage and dance half-heartedly for the rest of the night.

If a customer wants to be shown around Bangkok, then the cost of my service is up to him—the average payment is between 1,000 and 2,000 baht. I usually bring them to familiar haunts where the bars remain open until the early hours of the morning. Strictly speaking, these bars are illegal as they are supposed to close at 1 am.

I took hold of Tom’s hand and guided him out of the bar. He hadn’t specifically asked me to take him to a hotel, so I decided to move on to another bar. As we walked through the streets and lanes of Patpong, he was repeatedly accosted by men waving lists of lewd shows. These take place in clubs located above the bars and are performed by the older women who can no longer attract clients in the go-go bars. Tom was shown pictures of what was on offer, but he seemed more confused by them than anything else; he was probably wondering what role darts and ping-pong balls could possibly have to play in vagina-oriented shows, probably never imagining that women sat on a stage, shooting these items from their vaginas.

The street lights showed Tom to be older than I’d initially thought—his receding salt-and-pepper hairline and his furrowed brow suggested that he was possibly in his fifties. He seemed mesmerised by me. He put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer, with an intimacy that suggested we were girlfriend and boyfriend. The side of his large, protruding belly rubbed against my hip as we walked and he smelled of old, encrusted perspiration, but I didn’t resist him. I was a Patpong girl, and my body was all his tonight. I took him to a bar in Pratunam, a favourite hangout of Westerners. We got increasingly drunk until two hours later, Tom finally summoned up the courage to suggest we go back to his hotel room. I told him that my fee for a ‘long time’ was 6,000 baht, when in fact my usual fee was 4,000 baht. Tom didn’t know any better, though, and he eagerly agreed to the figure.

As it turned out, I deserved every extra baht I got because Tom was drunk and barely able to perform. Older men can take a long time to get an erection, and it’s hard for them to maintain it. Tom couldn’t seem to reach climax through intercourse so I opted to give him a hand job to finish him off. It took me almost two hours to satisfy him. Afterwards, he told me that he intended to stay in Bangkok for the next two weeks and that he would like to see me again. I smiled to myself—some customers seem to feel the need to cover up the fact that they have just paid for sex with the pretence that it was something more meaningful. I was more than happy to see Tom again—so long as he continued to pay me.

I worked seven nights a week. The girls at the bar became my closest friends, and my social life began to revolve solely around the red-light district. Patpong became my life and my relationship with Yuth, which was always tenuous, eventually withered and died. We stayed with each other for different reasons; I stayed with him because he took such good care of my children, and he stayed with me because I provided for him and kept him in beer money.

I worked from early evening till the early hours of the morning, and I would be exhausted in the morning when Atid went to school.